Forgotten Posts

Blog Post
I'm really cutting it close here. In order to see how many posts I needed to do, I had to look back at all the posts throughout the year. I wrote some interesting things back in the day. Oddly enough I think I still agree with many of the things I said back then, which is not generally the case with most people looking back on old writing. In the introduction to A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, he explains something about how he was prompted to perhaps edit the novel in this new edition, but he decided not to. He wrote that the man who wrote that book is a much different man from the man he is today. Maybe it will take longer for me to notice any kind of difference in myself when it comes to the writing center.

Third Party Observer #3
This sessions was the one that first disillusioned me. The phrase "we make better writers not better papers" was difficult to reconcile with this session helping an ESL student. The consultant took a direct authoritative approach here. I've always been a defender of a strong approach like this, but this was a bit stronger than usual. The student's assignment was to write their teaching philosophy, one strange aspect of this was that it had to be hand written on a single page of paper, I think this was a misunderstanding on the student's part, but I'll never know. Regardless, we spent the entire hour session working on this one single page.

Third Party Observer #4
This is a rare session to see. This was a session where an ESL student was the client, but it was not necessary to take an authoritative approach here. At each point in this students paper, the consultant asked the client "what do you mean by this?" or "what are you trying to say here?" Generally the client could think of something else to say, or a better way to put it. If he couldn't, then the consultant would suggest possible things to put, but always gave the client a choice and never actually forced him to put anything in particular.

Primary Consultant #3
This session was one of those rare sessions that are completely satisfying and seem to make all of the bad sessions that day worth it. This young woman came in with a paper for Lyman Briggs and began by saying "Kind of nerdy I know!" Apparently she didn't stop to consider where she was, in a room with a bunch of writing nerds. It is a great feeling to be able to say "You're a fine writer" to someone. She had all the work done for me, it was a paper about the pros and cons of genetically modified crops, each point was highlighted in a different color, red for pro, blue for con, or maybe the other way around. What she wanted help with was how to arrange her points, so it was easy work to figure out what each one was, make a list, and talk about what the best way to arrange them would be.

Primary Consultant #4
This was one of the most difficult sessions I've ever had. This student came completely unprepared for the session. He had his rough paper printed out but didn't have the assignment sheet. Normally that isn't a big deal, but he couldn't explain to me just what the assignment was. When he gave me a brief explanation, I understood because I've dealt with other people from the class before, and though not on this particular assignment, I knew what he meant when he said that it had to be about "cultural artifacts." It was even more difficult when he explained the three cultural artifacts that he chose for the paper. The first was cell phones, which made perfect sense for the assignment. The next wasn't a very good pick, with only a vague connection to the idea, but still a fair bit could be written on the subject. The third was awful and made no sense at all, but it was difficult to express this to him because it wass his paper, not mine. Ultimately we got through what little there was he wanted to work on, and he left.

Primary Consultant #5
This session was very similar to the one I just wrote about. What made it different was that the client needed help with something that I personally find quite bothersome. He wanted help with citation, specifically APA. The thing that bothers me about this sort of session is that I think it is ultimately a waste of time. Citation should be taught early on once, maybe a class spent on it, and then that is that. The same is true, I think, for other citation style. If they are even given any attention in class at all. What bothers me is that clients like this don't even seem to try. None of them come in having done any work on it at all, and they ask for help on it. Almost always they have a guide book with then, and so I spend 10 minutes basically opening the guidebook and doing things for them that they could easily do themselves.

Blog Entry
After writing about all these sessions I've had. I think the most important point I make is the one I made in my third primary consultant post. This isn't always easy, sometimes clients cancel and we have the opprotunity to just laze about drinking coffee and talking about random things with eachother. Other times nobody cancels and you're up to your eyeballs in consulting work for 4 hours straight. In either case, having just one good session makes either situation worth it. Having one session with a good writer whom you help tremendously makes that day worthwhile, and maybe even the entire week.