Different Forms of Expression?

I was discussing my confusion on the next assignment we have to do for this class with my performance group earlier, and my cluelessness reminded me of how dependent I am on writing academic papers. I remembered worrying, "What do you mean it doesn't have to be in the form of an academic paper?!" I suppose this thought reinforces the idea that this form of expressing our ideas is restrictive but I kind of like it because it's convenient for me. I'm so used to writing papers in this class as well as other classes and I'm reluctant to doing anything other than that. That's all we did in high school! I mean, I could do a poster or something but I really am not that creative/artistic as I'd like to be. Maybe a slam poetry presentation would work for me because I think those kinds of things are fun. I just see writing papers as a cop-out so maybe I'll try something else. I never expected to come to college and be told to do anything but write papers when it came to expressing my ideas...