One of my friends, an English prof who has put in his time in Freshman Composition, opined recently that undergraduate writing is not like writing a bicycle, but like playing the violin. In the former model, once you'd "learned how to write" you would always know. It would be a skill you could draw on at any time in the future. It would "come back to you" when you needed it no matter how long since you'd last done it. But in the latter model, writing is a practice to be undertaken daily. You must practice the forms and the skills constantly in order to write competently.
This (btw) is one of the reasons I publish a blog. A blog keeps me writing for an audience (however imaginary it may be!) even when my work of outlining lecture notes or reading in my field isn't forcing me to write academic prose daily. It's like playing scales, I suppose. (And you, lucky reader, are here to hear!)
My friend was a bit defensive, because, of course, those of us who do NOT teach Freshman Comp always have plenty of unsolicited opinions about why our students write so poorly, and a constellation of wonder about what the hell could they possibly have learned in Comp, and, if nothing (as seems so likely), then why the hell is the college even bothering to make it a requirement? As a former violinist, I find that my friend's analogy is apt - and useful for me in understanding where students are coming from, as well as expecting more of myself as a teacher in making them "play their scales." So to speak.
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I have to agree with your friend - I went to high school with a women who wrote well, but after 4 years as a engineering major in college, her skills had deteriorated considerably, to the point that even personal letters from her were somewhat painful to read. It's a shame that engineering schools don't encourage their students to write more - so many engineers go into management (or on to biz school) where they have to learn the skills all over again.
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