Welcome to Writing with Andrew!
Writing with Andrew began as a response to a handful of challenges that I faced as a writer and teacher:
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During my first term teaching an online writing class as a graduate student, I had weird (negative) interactions with students that I had never had in in-person classes. I thought it might have been because they perceived me as a faceless email robot that dispensed grades and not as a real person.
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As a writer and student myself, I loved all the science content that YouTube had to offer, but I always wished that there had been channels talking about writing and language, about the things that I really cared about.
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While working on a PhD in rhetoric, I grew increasingly frustrated with how bad (if we're being honest) rhetoricians and other academics in the humanities generally are at communicating our knowledge beyond college campuses and academic conferences. I knew that what I was studying was exciting and useful, and it was disappointing that it was so widely misunderstood without much of a peep from "the experts."
So, during the summer of 2019, I recorded my first video, a version of the lesson I often teach about writing effective introductions, while sitting on the floor of my apartment and talking at a phone.
During the long, quiet, solitary days of 2020, I settled into a rhythm of releasing weekly videos on a range of topics related to writing and rhetoric. Often, those videos were (and still are) inspired by the common issues that I saw in my students' writing. Then, I wrote my dissertation on how the most popular educators on YouTube build audiences that are interested in specialized, academic topics, and that informed and energized my work on the channel in new ways.
In the years since, Writing with Andrew has grown from an academic experiment to a global community. What excites me the most has been the response of viewers who tell me that the channel has opened doors for them, shown them some aspect of writing in a more positive light, or even helped them to finish a difficult assignment at the last minute (which I don't recommend by the way). In other words, the channel is slowly becoming the kind of channel that I longed for as an inexperienced writer, the kind of channel that takes the mystery and anxiety out of writing, revealing it for the satisfying and enjoyable activity that it is. At least, that's the goal, and it could never have been anything more than me sitting on the floor and talking to myself if not for all of you clicking on videos and deciding to stick around. So, once again, welcome. I'm glad you're here.