Session as a Client--#2

Today I finally managed to complete my final session as a writing center client. I brought in the second half of the final report for my internship with MessageMakers since it's for credit. The report basically had to go over what I learned in the internship. The first half gave an overview of the company and a brief intro of my job, and the only reason I didn't bring it in was because I didn't think there would be time to go over the whole thing.

The section that we worked with went over some of the writing projects I did for MessageMakers, detailing the writing processes I used, new genres I worked with, and some things that I learned there. This section was followed by one naming a few specific transitions and differences between school and work that prepared me for life after college. I brought this piece to the writing center to see if a consultant would think that I had explained everything well enough and if the things I learned sounded "valid," like I actually had learned something. My consultant had me read the paper aloud, and we stopped after every section to go over it.

My consultant gave me just what I needed today--another set of eyes to help point out things I hadn't considered. She asked me what my reaction was when my supervisor told me that a piece I wrote was good but not what they were looking for, something I hadn't thought to include in the report. She also made me think about why I was still motivated to complete my assignments and do well on them when so many of them didn't actually go anywhere or get printed, and I think a reflection of that will explain my professional persona more in the report.

One final thing my consultant pointed out is my excessive use of em-dashes, which I usually used as a substitute for parentheses or semicolons. I asked her at the end if we could go check out some of the books and figure it out since I had never realized there was anything wrong with my em-dash use, but as it turns out, they are really only used to add emphasis to a point that could be in parentheses or separated with a semicolon as the consultant suspected.

Hopefully next semester I'll have more time to bring my work to the center!