I love writing. But papers become more challenging than necessary when teachers insist on following different styles. This semester alone I have a professor who demands students use the “Chicago style,” another who wants MLA and all my journalism classes rely on AP. Just to throw in a loop, I even have a professor who has no style guides, just has plenty of personal “irks” that will result in a plethora of red ink.

Professors have the right to want what they want when it comes to paper, but they forget how frustrating inconsistencies can be for students. I understand professors are looking for styles to create clarity, but I think it’s the content of the paper, not which type of citation used, that deserves to be graded.

—Richelle Buser

Professors’ inconsistencies are destroying the fundamentals of education of the University as a whole and are dismantling our complex matrix of classes into a heap of contradictions.

Take for example a recent experience I had, that I am sure everyone can relate to: I was sitting in my developmental neurobiology class learning that inhibitory gamma-aminobutyric acid gated chloride channels actually have an excitatory role in the developing nervous system! Ridiculous, right?

I know what you’re thinking; we learned in introductory neurobiology that chloride channels always provide an inhibitory response since the concentration is higher outside the cell! So what’s with this discrepancy?

—Sai Folmsbee