Why Struggling Through an Assignment is Actually Good for Students

Sometimes, the hardest part of learning is the part that looks like struggling.

Struggling through assignments, specifically writing assignments isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

When a student stares at a blank page, struggling to find the right words, or rewrites the same paragraph multiple times, it can look like they’re not learning. However, this is when students are doing some of the most important work.

This allows students to challenge their minds by asking them to recall information, organize their thoughts, deliberately choose vocabulary, and construct an argument.

Brainstorming: The First Step to Stronger Thinking

Brainstorming teaches students how to think. Before they can write an essay, they have to figure out what they want to say. It encourages them to generate ideas, make connections, consider multiple perspectives, and create a logical direction for their writing.

The first draft is not expected to be perfect. Brene Brown famously calls it the “SFD” or “Shitty First Draft”. In our classrooms, we repeatedly tell students that we know that their first draft will be messy and frankly we would be worried if it didn’t look messy. It would mean that they haven’t poured their heart into it.

Explaining ideas clearly on paper is very different from having an idea. When students participate in the drafting process, they ask themselves questions such as: “Does this make sense? What am I actually trying to say? Do I have enough information or evidence to support my ideas? How do my ideas connect?”

This forces students to make their thinking visible.

Revision Teaches Students that Good Work Doesn’t Happen Immediately

One of the most valuable lessons writing can teach is that the first version doesn’t have to be perfect. Revision encourages students to rethink ideas, accept feedback, improve clarity, and identify weakness. When students go through revising their drafts they are questioning whether what the students meant to say is actually what they said. Deciding what to cut, what to expand, what to move. Revision asks a student to read their own work as a critical outsider and that is a sophisticated intellectual act that takes practice and courage to develop.

While writing itself has been proven to help the cognitive process of retaining information, the revision process helps refine and imprint that. As the New York Times article points out, “The revision process is a form of self-critique and self-improvement”.

Working to improve your writing can grow to show how important a growth mindset is and how this can translate into other aspects of your life.

Removing the Struggle Through A.I

The goal isn’t to eliminate Artificial Intelligence. It's to make sure students don’t outsource the parts of writing that are actually teaching them how to think. A.I can produce a polished paragraph almost instantly. Because A.I has this capability, students may be deprived of the cognitive skills built during the time of brainstorming, drafting, and revision. When working with A.I, students have shown lowered brain activity, more difficulty with recalling information, and most importantly, feeling ownership of their work.

Research is beginning to catch up with what many teachers have already sensed in the classroom. Studies on AI-assisted writing have found that students working with AI show lower levels of active brain engagement, greater difficulty recalling and owning the ideas in their work, and a diminished sense of authorship. That quiet but crucial feeling of "I made this." That feeling is not a small thing. It is the foundation of intellectual confidence.

None of this means AI has no place in a student's writing life. Used well, it can be a genuinely useful tool. A.I can be useful for initial feedback on your writing, and assistance with grammar and word choice. The distinction worth teaching students is this: AI as a thinking partner is valuable. AI as a ghostwriter is a shortcut that costs more than it saves.

The Goal of Writing is the Process, not Simply to Write a Good Essay

The goal of writing isn’t simply to create a good essay.

What writing is really doing, when it is taught well and taken seriously, is building a person. A student who knows how to sit with a half-formed idea and push it toward clarity. Who can take feedback without falling apart and use it to make something stronger. Who understands that the first attempt is rarely the best one. That this is not a failure, it is just how good work gets made.

Writing helps mold a student who knows how to develop an idea, communicate clearly, and think critically for themselves. Sometimes, getting there requires struggling by staring at a blank page.

That’s not a problem to solve — it’s a part of the learning process.

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