As i read the two essays "A Kid Word for Bullshit: The Problem of Academic Writing" by Eubanks and Schaeffer and "Kitchen Tables and Rented Rooms: The Extra Curriculum of Composition" by Anne Ruggles Gere, I realized that at first glance they may seem to be discussing two completely different topics. If you look deeper into their issues you will realize that they are arguing the same point; that academic writing has changed from benefiting its students to now bullshitting its readers. Gere talks more about the forms of writing, while E&S discusses how academic writing is generally made up of bullshit and nonsense. If Gere ever needed evidence for why extracurricular writing is better than academic she would be able to use E&S's piece as evidence to back up her theory.

The one thing that i really enjoyed about Gere's piece was that i could relate to the stories of those who were being written about. Unfortunately I do not appreciate writing as much as a use to due to the new rule and processes that come along with academic writing. These rules force people to lose interest in academic pieces, which is why academic writing is under appreciated. Both Gere and E&S agree that academic writings is no longer aimed at the joy of writing, now it generally is aimed at informing its readers, but the issue is whether or not what your reading is completely true. As stated in E&S, "Academic writing very seldom aims to deceive the reader about its content, but certainly is meant to enhance the reputation, the ethos of the writer" (383). Many times academic writers fill in the blanks with "bullshit, they use this technique to keep you the reader involved in their writings.

When E&S discuss literacy, I felt that they were talking about how academic writing has become a challenge for many to read and the reasoning is the use of jargon. When most people think of jargon they think of big words and intense phrases. If a writer uses too much jargon it can become hard to read and sometimes overwhelming. "when non-academics call academic writing bullshit, they mean that is uses jargon, words whose meanings are so abstract and vague as to seem unrelated to any one's experience"(381). Academic writing has become overwhelming for many people to read. Why would you read something you cannot understand or relate too ? In the closing of their essay E&S quote Frankfurt, "We can hope for is to avoid making the problem of academic bullshit larger than it is"(387). Everyone needs to understand that there is always going to be bullshit in academic writing but we need to learn how t decipher true information from false information.