As any seasoned English or Creative Writing Major can attest to, there are at least three key differences that exist between a Freshman-level General Education writing course and a class that is filled with students that have been in the Department of English a very long time.
Freshmen workshops and Peer Review sessions are so polite. Feedback slips are filled with positive affirmations, "I really like this!" and smiley faces scribbled in the margins. Although these responses are kind and make you feel all warm and fuzzy about yourself, they're not very helpful when it comes time to write your next draft.
...whereas once you're a senior you've quit caring about the feelings of others and have adopted a much more detailed and critical approach to this whole "workshop" thing. You can't remember if you've heard anyone utter a compliment that wasn't accompanied with a "but, I'm not so sure this part works..." Even your own friends offer up some pretty harsh criticisms. Et tu, Brute?! But you don't take it to heart. No one gets their feelings hurt anymore. You simply take note, polish your piece and patiently await your turn to workshop their submission.
As a freshman, you're most likely going to stick to topics that won't cause too much of a stir. Things like "Why We Should Have Recycling Bins on Campus." No one is going to go head-to-head with you on this stand. No one wants to be the person who says "Uhm, actually, I'm not sure recycling is such a good idea." Your papers come out being a little, well...boring, sometimes.
...as a Senior, however, selecting what to write about becomes a game of "Hmm. How many taboo subjects can I fit into a five-page short-story?" A round of workshop in a Creative Writing class suddenly feels as if you're discussing an avant garde film. As hard as you try to make your classmates squirm and to have your Professor consider sending you to the campus therapist, they shrug their shoulders, sip their coffee and murmur "Meh. I've read more disturbing things in my junior high diaries."
Freshmen are usually really good at line-editing. They have the ability to become hyper-focused on spotting out spelling errors, changes in tense, and all of the other things that the Professor has set as a list of a things to look for in academic writing. They consult their MLA Handbook as if it is a religious text, and will even ask the Professor to check their in-text citations and Works Cited page before they turn in their papers.
...by the time you're almost finished with your Undergraduate career, though, you've come to terms with the fact that if the people you've been in classes with for the past four years still don't know the difference in there, their and they're, they're probably not going to get the hang of it now. You don't even bother marking these trivial errors on your peers' drafts anymore. You all just silently agrees that some of you suck at spelling and grammar and that it's okay, because one day you'll all be famous authors that have editors to worry about that kind of thing.
Also, you gave up on trying to properly cite a source on a bibliography a few years back. Ya know, when that older friend of you finally let you in on the little life-saving (although sometimes incorrect) secret that is EasyBib.
