Hofstra Interviews Consensus

In my interviews with Hofstra students, I have found that many people are uncomfortable talking about writing. They answer my questions because I ask them too, but they are really uninterested in talking about writing. I feel the biggest reason for this is that none of them really consider themselves writers, because they tend to consider writing as purely a profession, and that their countless texts, facebook updates, and academic papers, while qualify as pieces of writing, do not qualify them as true writers. There is no personal connection for many students with writing, and it is viewed purely as a tedious, boring, activity that they try to engage in as infrequently as possible. When I ask them what they write, the most common answer are essays and other academic writing. The second most common answer I received was from film majors who said that they write scripts. However, no one told me that they write stories, diaries, poems, or any other creative writing. Although, when I mentioned texting and facebook, they did generally decide that they were pieces of writing, but they weren't important enough to remember without my interjection. Overall, I feel that there is no national conversation on writing, because no one is really talking about their writing, even though they engage in digital writing constantly. I feel as though that digital writing is unconscious; we do not even realize how much we write via texts and facebook until it is brought to our attention.