Many traditionally held academic views of personal writing have myths embedded in them. These myths include: (1) anything written in the first person singular is autobiographical; (2) personal writing can only exist in an expressionist classroom and is often uncritical and unproblematic; (3) student personal writing is a dying genre, and college courses should concentrate on the new, complicated and difficult; (4) all personal writing is sufficiently alike in intellectual and aesthetic dimensions to be unrewarding to read or write; (5) encouraging students to write personally will cause them to be solipsists and egotists and to resist further writing development; and (6) personal writing is the antithesis of the normative, intellectually rigorous, objective way of dealing with information and controversy in the academic world. Overcoming these myths in the composition classroom and curriculum will encourage engaged reading, writing, and exchanging of ideas. (EF)