/lit/ - Literature

>be a bio major
>enjoy writing, and enroll in a creative writing class
>class introductions
>everybody is an english major or some other liberal arts major
>nobody can figure out why a bio major enrolled (was it an accident? are you in the wrong room?)

>semester goes on
>no instruction on how to write, in the elements of a story, or how to write a good character
>teacher just assumes we all have diaries full of perfect characters and that we all had imaginary friends when we were little

>pretty much straight into work-shops
>80% of the students write their stories in present tense
>10% try to pull off some sort of battle manga/japan-is-katana bullshit
>10% turn in single-page incomprehensible "poetry," for lack of a better word, even though it's a prose class
>continue through the college's Intro, Intermediate, and Advanced Creative Writing classes
>all that changes is that at the advanced level, 100% of the students write in present tense

Goddammit. Present tense has its uses, but there's are good reasons people use past tense in narratives, you fuckheads.