Satellite Observation - Library

The first time I tried to do my library observation a couple weeks ago, I couldn't even do it because no one showed up. I say this to point out one major difference between the Bessey center and the library - lots more no shows. Today, I finally got to see an appointment. It was scheduled for a half hour, but ended up going about 50 minutes - I'll return to that later.

I'll begin by pointing out the differences at the satellite center versus the "home" center. As we've discussed, the half hour sessions have a whole different vibe because they're so rushed. The environment is more intimate, because the space is smaller and there are fewer appointments going on. Other than these things, the appointments didn't seem to differ much from the appointments at Bessey - still the same ratio of ESL to non-ESL students, etc.

Now, I kind of had some issues with the way this session went... but I don't want to sound uppity in my criticisms... the first thing that bothered me was that in the assignment sheet the student provided, the consultant made a HUGE deal about something she thought was a grammatical error made by the professor. She literally spent about 5 minutes of a short session griping about how the professor couldn't even get this "simple" rule right. I didn't say anything at the time... but I was pretty sure the professor was in fact correct and the consultant was incorrect - I looked it up when I got home and I was right. But I digress...

The student said they had been in to the center earlier with the same paper, and was told that they didn't meet the assignment criteria. They were told to try to get an extension and come back to the center. They got the extension, and came back with the same paper, less than a day before the extended due date. Specfically, they had not engaged in the analysis necessary for the paper, and so she asked at the very beginning of the session to focus on analysis and how to go about doing it (she didn't really even understand the concept). The consultant spent the entire 1/2 hour on just the intro - she hadn't even read/had the consultant read the rest of the paper yet. Generally analysis doesn't happen until later than the intro of a paper, so I thought this was sort of odd. When the 1/2 hour was up, and the consultant's next client arrived, she asked the next client if she could have 5-10 more minutes with the client I was observing. The next client said that was ok, but her appointment didn't begin until a full half hour after it was supposed to. The consultant didn't even begin to address the issue of analysis in the paper until after the 1/2 hour was up. She then suggested the girl change her entire topic and start the paper over, even though she had less than a day to work. I don't know, maybe I'm being overly critical, but I just thought the entire session was poorly handled.