Part of writing well is to write clearly and concisely. If you write complicated sentences with obscure and convoluted words then you're not writing well. It's like digging through a big box of tissue paper to find the CD you wanted. The CD rocks but the extreme amount of packaging is annoying and unnecessary.

The point of writing in college is to be concise and to the point, not to use as much complicated vocabulary as possible in order to make yourself sound more intelligent than you are. For instance, I could use the sentence I wrote up above, or say: "In academia and in other associated institutions, it is often thought to be necessary to utilize simplistic vocabulary which presents a central and driving point, in opposition to using superfluous and verbose styles of writing which further pushes an inaccurate self-concept of extreme intelligence." Which one sounds like it's trying too hard?

While you may have used some unnecessarily long words, the truth is, and some of the commenting people on here need to get that, is not every college professor deserves their tenure. Too often, it is not awarded for excellence or achievement, rather in many cases because of playing politics and in more than a few the person spent all of their life at the university/college and they just made them a member of the department because they couldn't make them leave or they conned their way in.

Actually, I know exactly what your professor means. It kinda pisses me off when people go out of their way to sound extra smart in their writing, when you could just get the point across in a short, simple sentence.

Nothing says public school like underachieving professors

Actually your prof is probably trying to help you. Using big words for the sake of using big words is never as effective as using small words that mean more. Having a complex vocabulary is a good thing, yes, but knowing when to use it is a much more valuable trait.

I agree with your professor. In the real world, most people prefer conciseness over verbiage. No one wants to be reading a dictionary while trying to understand something you wrote. It also makes you seem like you think you're better than them, even if you didn't mean it.

Jdhfbid

He has a point though. You don't need to use the biggest words you know to get a message across. It can look like you just whipped out a thesauraus and used the fanciest words. Even if you regularly use those words, it's not really needed.

Don't hate on your professor too much. Sometimes using large words as a matter of course can make your writing seem clunky and forced. The point is to make it accessible to the person reading it. If it was an intro course, make it read so that a student on that level can understand it. Save the big words for the upper level science and graduate courses.