The first year college student receives mixed messages about writing. Consider some mutually incompatible phenomena they observe. They might infer that writing is terribly important. Their evidence for this is that freshman composition is almost universally mandatory. Simultaneously, students might infer that writing is exceedingly unimportant. Why, otherwise, would ‘mere’ graduate students and adjunct faculty teach it, and with so few resources? (Crowley 241) Freshman may be excused confusion over the purpose of freshman composition. They may also be forgiven for being perhaps disappointed at the results (Taylor 54). What a first year student extracts from a writing class depends to some degree on what they bring to the class. It may depend on the socioeconomic class of which they are a part, and the school from which they graduated. What they get out of a first year composition class may also depend on what their instructor brings to the course. This baggage includes not only the instructor’s personal training, experience, and proclivities, but also the attitude of the college towards this endeavor. A clearer common orientation towards what individual students need from a writing class could help to make this element of education more useful and less frustrating for all stakeholders. From the student’s perspective, much depends on background. Coming from a disadvantaged school, their major writing exercise might have been, in fact, their admissions essay. Formal grammar study may have ended in middle school and consisted of worksheets. They may covered perhaps two to four books each year. Their texts may have been largely from anthologies. In such books of readings, sections of longer text are sometimes excerpted, and even modified. (This technique of presenting texts can be misleading and confusing, especially if the student has actually read the work previously.) Most exams may have been in multiple-choice format and graded by Scantron. They may come from a family where speech is stereotypical and largely profane, or not even in English (Kitzhaber 6). There may be no role model at home for reading in any language, and writing may consist of agency or employer form completion. Some of these issues are reflected in the questions that Downs’ and Wardle’s students research themselves. For example, their students examined how literacy activities varied between day care centers. This demonstrates student recognition of how early the writing gap between the haves and the have-nots develops (Downs and Wardle 562). Freshman from an advantaged school, on the other hand, may have studied twelve or more books annually, and perhaps more texts in another world language. They may have been taught to identify, obtain, and use primary sources. However, even their teachers may not have proofread assignments with useful detail or attention to grammar (Taylor 52). Their home conversation may be substantive. They may listen to public radio. Their families may read and write for their own pleasure, even if only in response to an online news story or blog post. It is almost as if they are using speech and writing in a completely different way. They do share other things, however. One shared item is an incessant use of social media, which is largely text based. If the