I recall being very unsure about what I was supposed to do.  And that feeling was magnified even more by the time I began my dissertation. I remember being afraid, but my strengths of curiosity, love of learning, and perseverance were helpful... at times...when I remembered to call on them. Student writers in undergraduate school and graduate  school, dissertators, academicians, and professional writers all need to know how to use different rhetorical strategies and how to write in specific discourses. Learning those skills is hard work, and teaching those skills and the type of writing in which those skills are learned is a bear, especially in terms of the paper load. Is it a student's responsibility to teach herself?  Maybe, but when is she or he told that it's her job or how does she pick up on the cues of what kind of writing will serve her best? One Response You know, I think I was always a good writer, thanks to early training by my mother (herself a writer and reporter) as well as good teachers from K-12 and beyond. But as for the how-to's of writing a dissertation? I didn't have a clue. It was a process that both my Ph.D. program and advisors mystified, perhaps unintentionally, perhaps not. "Your own voice doesn't come through," complained my diss chair (with reason), even at the end of the process. I didn't know what that meant, and unfortunately she couldn"t explain it to me. It's only now that I'm