ABSTRACT
Because PhD candidates are all former student writers, this chapter examines the rhetorical conditions that define what academic writing typically means for undergraduates, in terms of audiences, motivations, standards, time constraints, and frames of reference: factors that will dramatically change in advanced graduate work. Conceptual diagrams illustrate the ways in which undergraduates are trained to simulate works of scholarship in narrow time frames and with limited knowledge. The chapter explains the habitual “rhetorical settings” that make the completion of impossible tasks possible, including the differential settings of motivations and standards for writing in the present moment.
