I have been thinking about things I haven’t used since high school. Been wondering if high school was just a waste of time. If there should have been trades or specialization. I never used MLA formatting in more than a decade.
High school (and all primary schooling) is 50% teaching you useful facts and knowledge and 50% teaching you skills like concentrated work effort, sitting and listening, taking instructions and following them, and applying critical thinking to transform knowledge. MLA falls into the latter category, in my opinion.
I would say teaching you how to learn is like 75% of school if they are doing it right.
I duel degreed in undergraduate earning a BA and a BS simultaneously. The classes in my BA major used MLA and the classes in my BS major used APA. It seems like it was the same in my gen eds, arts classes tended to use MLA and science classes APA. I liked MLA better, APA wants more concise writing and I tend to be somewhat wordy. In my professional career I mostly deal with spreadsheets and autogenerated reports.
Highschool has very limited specialization. You learn lots of stuff you’ll never use because they are trying to give students a wide base of basic knowledge and skills that will be built upon wherever you go next. It is meant to prepare you for a job or a college major but not any specific job or college major. You specialize more in the next step and the further you advance the more specialized you get.
This format is actually used. In colleges and universities, especially in the humanities and social sciences, the MLA format is often used for coursework, for example. But students usually get lazy and decide to pay for essay writing, find https://ca.edubirdie.com/pay-for-essay-writing for help. In short, they can’t come up with anything. I would remove half of the formats altogether; they make no sense.
Nope, I went to University of Chicago, where of course we use the Chicago Style instead of MLA.
Would be kind of hilarious if they didn’t use Chicago Style.
I use style guides every day of my career. I haven’t specifically used MLA or APA that was used in high school, but learning that style guides existed and how to follow them was a big stepping stone.
Chicago Style supremacy 😤😤
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I don’t do the kind of writing that would require any formal format, but a teacher in college seemed to feel that MLA was meant to be used strictly in an academic setting. I’m not sure what I was told to use in high school, but in college all the writing classes wanted us to use a format relevant to our major. I believe I used APA but it has been awhile. Could have been MLA.
I’ve only really had to use APA and Chicago style since I was studying psychology, sociology, EE, and CS, but I’ve heard that English majors sometimes have to use MLA. Not sure though.
