More things...

Final project reflections
I assumed before I went into this project that there would be probably a healthy amount of information out there on my subject for me to look at, and I was right. The problem I ran into is that a lot of it isn't exactly what I need. There's a lot of info for people who want to advertise (themselves or a product) on the web, as well as a lot of info for people who write websites. As in code. Which we (meaning the writing consultants) probably won't be presenting on soon. Or at least not the non-DWC's. In any case, this means that I've had to do a lot of weeding out of the kind of information I want because a lot of it ends up not being directly relevant, though a lot of it is very interesting. Looking at what some people deemed the worst sites on the internet was quite amusing. I've also read some of the most useless blogs, some of which made me laugh out loud and some of which made me shake my head. But do I need to know what some of the stupidest blogs on the web are? Not really. Maybe that's a better example of me getting sidetracked.
Perhaps the fact that it's finals week has also somehow made my fellow students check out every library book I've wanted for the past two weeks. All of them. Well, except one that was listed as being in the building, but when I looked for it it wasn't there. It wasn't checked out, there just was no space for it on the shelf and it wasn't there. Very frustrating.
One of the useful things about the stuff I've read is that there's not a lot of conflicting information. I did a research paper my sophomore year about Joe McDonald (as is Joe McDonald from Country Joe and the Fish) where I was afraid to cite a fact because almost every source I read from said something different. You'd think at least dates would be consistent. Though this was the sixties...
Anyway, I've been able to find information that backs up my other information, which is great because there's really no basis to tell someone that they should do something a certain way because one source said so.
I've had trouble figuring out how to write about and format all the information I've found, though I think I've decided that a report sort of format would be best. We shall see.

Writing Fellows (aka Writing Mentors)
I'm pretty excited about the oppotunity to be a Writing Mentor this spring. I've never really had a problem where not knowing about the subject about which a client is writing has prevented me from being able to help him or her, though there have been some times when knowing more about the field would have saved both the client and me some time if I'd known which questions I had were important or not. Sometimes things didn't make sense to me that the client explained would make perfect sense to the professor (though this may not have been true in every situation). Being a Writing Mentor for a specific class that I know something about should prevent those types of issues, since I should be able to know whether or not something will make sense to a professor, or whether or not this is a common way to talk about things in this field. The chance to work with professors could also be helpful in not only making assignments clearer, but also helping them to understand that a Writing Mentor or any writing consultant can potentially do more important work than just fixing someone's questionable grammar. I guess I'm thinking optimistically about the professors; we'll just have to see. Something I hadn't considered before but that I think is a good thing now is that there are multiple tutors who would be working with the same class. I think it will be helpful for people to be able to talk to other tutors who are dealing with similar issues, especially since this is a new project and none of the new Writing Mentors will have done anything like this before.

Oops...
So another thing it turns out I completely forgot to record in here is my time as a client, which wasn't all that sensational one way or another. Both my sessions were at the libarary because I assumed that I wouldn't need more than half an hour for either of the things I brought in. This was true the first time, but not the second. The first time, I brought in a partially finished paper I was working on about semicolons for my Grammar and Style class. I did this session mostly on a whim because I was already in the library. In any case, I had this paper most of the way done but had no idea how to end it. It wasn't an argument, more just a compilation of research about how different resources deal with semicolons. Really, the conclusion shouldn't have been that hard, I think I just couldn't make up my mind because I'd been working on it too long. Things didn't start off too well because I didn't do a very good job describing what I wanted to the tutor, so he and I read through my paper and he pointed a few areas where he though I could expand on things a little and maybe give a few examples of what I was talking about. I didn't, however, really appreciate his input because I actually liked most of what I'd written so far and felt I was going to receive a 4.0 on the paper, as I had for all the others I'd already written for that class. We eventually discussed my conclusion, which I said I was thinking about ending with a quotation I'd found that I felt really summed up the general feelings of grammarians on semicolons. The tutor agreed that I could do this, though I think he didn't realize that I intended to end with almost nothing BUT the quotation. The quotation was long, and, as I said, summarized the feeling well, but my teacher wrote me a note saying that a quotation wasn't a real conclusion, which seemed obvious to me in hindsight. I wish the tutor had helped me see that, but I feel that was really more my fault than his.
My second session was for a paper from the same class, since I didn't write a lot for any of my other classes. This one was called "What's on My Desk?," the required title for a piece everyone in my class had to write for our class portfolio. I'd already decided which resources would be on my fictional future desk, but I couldn't figure out a good way to make it sound interesting, or to make it longer than a page. It didn't really have to be long, but I told the tutor I was afraid of making it sound like a list, which is kind of what my draft sounded like. He suggested making it more personal, talking more about myself and why I would choose these kinds of resources rather than other resources I could think of. I wrote down some ideas we had during the session, and we talked about how my introduction could be more of a picture of me and my future workplace and not just the resources on my desk. We also talked about what I might do for a conclusion, which I did not have in my paper at the time. Unfortunately, I needed more time than I got for that session and had to leave without really feeling like I'd finished talking to the tutor about everything I'd wanted to talk about. However, it was a nice, conversational session, which I haven't really had with a client yet. After reading the draft, we didn't even really look at my paper much anymore. The only thing that spoiled this session for me a bit was the noise in the library, which, as I've said before, I do not like for sessions. There was a large group studying across from us in the computer session and none of them seemed to have any interest in being quiet. I don't think I'll come in as a client again, but if I did, it would be at Bessey, which I feel is much more relaxing as a place to talk.