Student beliefs about academic writing convince them that academic writing should sound boring or familiar in a way that precludes innovation. Composition teachers are clearly telegraphing something to students about writing, it’s just not the message that we want to send. In a qualitative study of five student interviews about academic writing, this paper argues that the message students receive tells them that academic writing should be stilted, awkward. It should sound as “smart” as possible. It should sound like other “academic texts” they have read. Some of the goals of composition, however, are to teach that writing is something versatile, worthwhile, and something that we can pursue in recognizable forms. Students conceive of “academic writing” as its own genre whose recognizable form relies just as heavily on awkward wording, boring topics, and prescriptive but subjective instructor feedback as it does on features such as citations and credible research.