Journalistic vs Academic Writing

For the majority of my 15, some-odd years in the Texas, California, and now Oklahoma public school systems, all that was ever taught to me was academic, MLA style writing. Switching to AP style has been tricky, but not so difficult that I cringe when I'm told to pull out the AP Stylebook. I appreciate the conciseness of AP styling; though, I often miss the complex sentence structuring allowed in MLA academic writing. I certainly miss the creativity. Brevity and accuracy are two very important aspects to AP style writing and I fully intend to improve my skills in both.