Jason Peters offers a somewhat frightening description of how to write like the average undergraduate male. Here's the intro:

The first thingand this for obvious reasonsis that you must prefer “within” to “in.” “Within” is longer and takes up more space on the page; plus it’s a word that makes you sound smarter because it makes you sound smarter. So you begin thus: “Within the poem …”

That’s auspicious. But you have to produce five hundred words of analysis on “The Road Not Taken,” though had you been listening in class you’d know that that’s the one poem on which you may not write your analysisand this, again, for obvious reasons: the professor is not interested in reading yet another paper about how deciding to play football your senior year in high school “made all the difference.”

One wonders what book or poem freshmen writing professors least want to read about. Or given some college writing professors among Dish readers, maybe we could find out.