8: Academic writing: a paradox?

I'm going to preface this blog post by informing you, the reader, that it may seem more of rant, than a self-reflection. But it is indeed, meant to be a reflection on my experiences in the graduate studies program.

Coming from an engineering background, there weren't many academic papers to be read in my undergraduate. However, I pride myself on staying informed - reading journals, relevant magazines, newspapers, etc. My B.Ed. was my first 'real experience' with true academic writing. Sure APA formatting was discussed in high school, and touched upon in my B.A.Sc., but it was not taken seriously. Reading countless papers in the B.Ed. and M.Ed. program was and still is a strain. I find many papers are written to be more complex than need be. Authors switch languages, and seem to be using a thesaurus for every other word.

Where academic papers are meant to inform, I find they confuse me even more. The writing styles, for the most part, are concise, but complex, and sometimes I find it extremely difficult to decipher the message the researcher is trying to get across. If researchers and authors want to reach a wide audience, should they not write in a way that is easily understandable? Or are many researchers simply trying to feed their own ego, to make them appear more brilliant than they actually are?

-Ragu