As much as I enjoyed the Annoyed Librarian’s list of classes every library school should offer, I’m very glad to see this post over at ACRLog.

Library school may not have been the academic experience I was expecting from my prior grad school attempt, but every single professor with whom I’ve taken a class has done their best to inform us on a professional level.

I’d add just one thing to Melissa’s list: How to Write Better. The majority of the students in my program were not great writers as undergraduates (few undergrads are), and even those of us who were got a bit rusty in the intervening years. Because most of us take a comprehensive essay exam in order to complete the program, the emphasis throughout has been on logical, coherent writing — the sort of writing those of us going into tenure-track jobs will need to be able to do in order to get published. The sort of writing that looks good in the cover letter to a job application or in an annual report.

What makes it more impressive in my book is that I doubt many (if any) of these professors have had any formal training in writing instruction, unless it was in the context of a writing across the curriculum workshop. Writing is a frustrating thing to teach under the best of circumstances, so I can imagine the headache of trying to do it on top of the topic at hand.

Edited to add: I only wish I’d had the guts to do this when I taught business writing.