You want undergraduates who can write, think, and read? Stop pretending that writing can be taught across the curriculum by geologists and physicists who wouldn’t recognize a dependent clause if it bit them on the ass.

My own writing interests me less than it used to; and while I know that to teach and to mentor is truly a calling, on a day-to-day basis I often find myself overwhelmed by the needs of my students—who seem to trust in an influence I no longer have, and in a knowledge of which, increasingly, I am uncertain—and by the university’s mindless adherence to bureaucratic demands.