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Fortunately, the writing process itself provides one of the best ways to help students learn the active, dialogic thinking skills valued in academic life. Students need to understand that even for the most skilled writers, composing an essay is a tortuous process because, as writing theorist Peter Elbow (1973) has argued, “meaning is not what you start out with but what you end up with… Think of writing then not as a way to transmit a message but as a way to grow and cook a message” (15). Thus, the elegance and structure of thesis‐governed writing—as a finished product—evolves from a lengthy and messy process of drafting and redrafting. An across‐the‐curriculum emphasis on multiple drafts encourages the messy process whereby writers become engaged with a problem and, once engaged, formulate, develop, complicate, and clarify their own ideas. The habit of problem posing and thesis making does not come naturally to beginning college students, who write more clearly (but dully) when given easier assignments that do not challenge them as thinkers. The next sections explore this phenomenon in more detail.