Primary Consultant #5

Okay, last one. Here we go.

I had probably my least favorite primary consultant session a month ago. It was with a journalism student who felt very confident in her writing and just couldn't stop complaining about how ridiculous the professor grades because EVERYONE seems to be doing well except her. So, I said, let's do this thing.

She was writing a paper about causes and American involvement in the Vietnam War, and this client talked a mile a minute. Half the time I wasn't sure if she even wanted my help and instead just preferred to discuss how great her writing was and how inept everyone else seemed to be. The other half, she was arguing with me about my suggestions because someone ELSE told her this and that and how if she did this, that made more sense, and blah blah...so, that was frustrating. I feel that if you're coming to a writing center, you should at least entertain new ideas and perspectives, even if you wholeheartedly disagree with them. At least have the tact to politely ignore every single opinion the consultant gives you.

Nope. Not happening with this client. But I think, with my newly adopted non-directive approach, I was able to show her a few errors in her thought process without pointing them out. I asked her, "So, how do you know this?" and she replies, "Everyone knows this." And I said, "Is it even true?" And she said "How could it not be true?"

I wanted to die a few times, but I managed to ask her enough questions to show her that, no, that wasn't necessarily true, and no, it wasn't even something everyone else believed to be true. But she had a horrid fear of finding more sources for citing, so she decided to take out entire portions that either required citation or ended up not being relevant. She definitely seemed to want to put work into the paper, but she didn't seem to want to put in any work she deemed irrelevant or unacceptable.

It's difficult to deal with this type of client. I feel that no one is ever right or wrong in a session, but when you can't reach any kind of consensus on anything in a paper, it feels as though both of you are completely wasting your time, and in those situations, I feel I need to speak up and clearly express the responsibilities of the writing center, what we do here exactly, and how having a more open mind might help in the future.

Okay, I might not say the last part, but I feel as a center we need to come up with a blanket tactful statement for these situations. It's also possible I overlooked a few strategies to deal with it, but I think my frustration overcame my sense of clarity and direction. Hopefully I can manage to have a more level head in the future.

3B Video Exercises (weekly post)

The tutoring videos exhibited a fairly broad range of body language and consultant-client positioning during sessions. Video 2 in particular was a clear over-embellishment of what NOT to do as a tutor in a session. So, I've compiled a list addressing the dos and don'ts of a client's and a consultant's body language based on these delicious videos. Brief notes: I enjoyed the title of video 3, as well as the consultant's reading selection post-session.

Consultants:

DO maintain appropriate and proper eye contact the entire time.

DO greet the client and introduce yourself with a firm handshake and a smile.

DON'T furrow your brow constantly, especially while looking directly at the client.

DON'T make weird negative hand motions, like you're cutting something off, or shaking your head deliberately, like you're lecturing a petulant child.

DO maintain your distance. Give the client plenty of working space, as well as personal space. The cubicle in video 3, for example, seemed a bit crowded/cramped for my liking.

DO present a positive demeanor, and be prepared. Seeming visually or otherwise downtrodden or negative will only convey to the client that you either don't want to be there or don't place a lot of important on the paper/session.

DON'T start rewriting everything for the client. I think that's what was being demonstrated in video 3, contrasted with very light sketches from the HP consultant, but if you are taking that directive of an approach, it's no surprise if the client becomes distanced and unengaged with what you're doing and with what's happening in the session.

DO be respectful.

Clients:

DON'T be eating something as you're entering the center/introducing yourself. It's kind of gross and really unprofessional.

DON'T look all around and here and there. It tells the consultant you're not paying attention to the session and therefore wasting both your and his/her time.

DO be organized. Come with at least one printed out copy of your paper/project (preferably two). When you bring it in with a slew of other papers, on a laptop without printing capabilities, or a handwritten version, you're preventing optimal consulting and feedback.

DO turn off your cell phone. This applies to consultants, as well, but was made evident in the second video. It's bad enough if the ring interrupts the session; it's even 10 times worse if you answer it.

DO be engaged. This consultant is here to help you, and you alone; if you treat it as another teacher giving you "crap" about a paper, you are, once again, wasting the time of both of you.

DO be respectful. Video 2, once again, demonstrated an acute lack of respect for the consultant. Not cool.

2nd and 3rd co-consults

My second co-consultation (technically my first, because I ran solo on my other), taking place on Thursday, Sept. 18, was with an ESL student working on his dissertation. The consultant overseeing me silently took notes as I had him read each paragraph, after which we spent time going over HOCs/LOCs. His priority was to ensure that the content made sense to English speakers and fit traditional descriptive grammar.

I had a lot of fun with this writer. He was always open to suggestions but readily defended his word choices and sentence structure. We were both so thoroughly engaged in the session that the overseeing consultant had to stop us from time restriction. I told her I could stay longer, and so could he, so she left us alone and we spent more time covering similar issues, as well as inanimate objects assuming animate actions and such.

Before leaving, the consultant went through the issues she noticed throughout and knew an incredible amount about the topic he was addressing. They were mostly sentence revisions and a few questionable diction choices that she outlined through a cluster diagram, demonstrating that his parallel structure in one area of his dissertation referred to something entirely different from what he was trying to convey.

After my first session and officially observing six or seven sessions, I feel confident that I've mastered WC protocol. There are finer details to work out, but I am confident I will build on them as I continue to learn and grow with other consultants and writers.

***

My third co-consultation (Monday, Sept. 22) was with a Tier I writer working on a persuasive essay. The overseeing consultant was a classmate who was supposed to be co-consulting, as well, but she and I teamed up and got things done. We had the writer read through each paragraph at first but quickly realized she was just half way done and hadn't developed many of her ideas.

Note to self and all: Always check when a paper is due and what the professor wants in the syllabus. Evidently the paper had been due at 5 p.m. that day, and it was...3 p.m. Or maybe 1? I didn't know this, so I started spending at least 10 minutes describing to her what she could do, and my co-consultant said "Well...what can we do for you to turn this in on time and have time to revise?" So there's that.

The client seemed to zone out at times, and I wasn't sure if it was because we were telling her to change too much, or if we were giving her too much advice...or too many revision directions...either way, the client said at the end that we had helped her tremendously, but I had no way of knowing this for sure. I guess a consultant never does. You do what you can with what you have given the time constraints and the standards and intentions of the client. It was a very interesting topic, one the consultant and I knew a lot about, but yeah. Maybe I shouldn't be as directive next time. I did ask her plenty of developmental questions, but she was in a very early stage in the writing process, which is something I need to take into account in the future.

Client Session One

On Thursday, Sept. 18, I had my first session as a client. I brought in a few ideas I had for a column I was writing, as well as the intro paragraph.

First, the consultant asked me what I wanted readers to get out of my piece. With every response I had, the consultant had another question about my answer, how it related to the piece, and what new territory that answer opened up.

I didn't feel odd or awkward at all in being tutored. Maybe it's because I've already led two sessions and have observed the interaction several times; maybe it's because I know we're learning from each other. Either way, it didn't feel like a teacher-student relationship; I felt as an equal, someone who had ideas and thoughts to exchange and share, as well as strategies to implement in my writing. It felt pretty fantastic, actually.

The consultant often digressed in her suggestions, making me feel like she was giving me as much feedback as possible while acknowledging that she may not know precisely how the piece should be written or structured. I found the constant stream of questions to be most helpful, because I myself don't always ask enough questions about what I'm writing. What's the point of this paragraph? Don't people already know this? Isn't this common knowledge? Once you have an idea in place and think it's a great one, you don't continually second-guess yourself; this session made it that much clearer that a second set of eyes, regardless of how much experience lay behind them, is critical to the writing.

To tackle the last bullet point in the Bedford guide, the tutor made me feel comfortable the entire time. The session was productive, relaxed, and appropriately engaging. I look forward to my next one.

Two observation sessions; one spur-of-the-moment client consultation

Observation One

On September 11 at 1 p.m., I examined a Writing Center consultation session with an ESL economics major. He brought in a chapter of his dissertation, which was lofty with pages and facts.

The consultant had him tell us about his paper and what he wanted to get out of the session. She had him read it aloud and stopped at each paragraph to regroup, ask clarifying questions about content or confusing portions. She conceded that certain terms may fall strictly within his discourse community, so it's possible that as a lay reader, one may not understand it. Along the way, she highlighted grammatical concerns that he was very open to learn from and change. She consistently provided positive reinforcement and feedback, always focusing on the good before pointing out potential flaws.

I thought this was especially critical in a session -- constant positive reinforcement. No matter how much a paper has room to improve, it's necessary to let the author know they have done a lot of good with it to make them realize they are good writers -- making something better is just part of the writing process.

At a few points, she asked me what I thought about certain parts, and I gave opinions according to the topic. She regularly had him explain certain things or why he wrote sentences a certain way, and also asked him how he would change something when she didn't feel it fit perfectly. Her comments and assistance were appropriately directive and logically submissive when he needed to take the wheel.

I enjoyed the balance between direction and submission. Pointing clients in the right direction but having them decide whether they go in that direction or how they get there is pertinent to becoming a better writer and developing one's craft. This session was a wonderful blend.

What I liked most is that the two of them took as much time as they wanted on certain portions of the text. Despite the one-hour time limit and the considerably long dissertation chapter, they arrived at maybe the fourth or fifth page before going over the limit by a few minutes. I noticed she bypassed a few considerable grammatical elements but managed to tackle prominent ones, particularly plurality issues and verb disagreements. She clearly prioritized high-order concerns and constantly made the client feel comfortable and confident.

Observation Two

On September 11 at 2 p.m., I observed a session with another ESL student who had composed an essay on second-language acquisition relevant to an in-class text. The consultant had the client tell her what kind of help she needed, and they got started. This consultant didn't print off copies like my first observation session, so I didn't have a paper to follow along closely.

I wrote this question during the session, but I have it answered: Do you always have the client or the consultant read the paper aloud? Another consultant told me yes, the client should always read it out loud, unless he or she is uncomfortable, in which case, the consultant reads.

So far, it seems that lower-level concerns such as grammar is only a priority when it inhibits understanding or when the client is an ESL student who needs it explained/corrected. This consultant had a more authoritarian approach compared with the consultant in my first observation: She did all of the writing on the paper, she rarely asked how the client thought something should be written or constructed, and she took charge by drawing roadmaps on the paper and delineating reasons for restructure. She focused on positive elements, asking clarifying questions, and asked how the client would construct her conclusion. The first session definitely had more macro-editing, while this consultant was always re-examining the bigger picture.

The copier code is 300.

I could tell the client was learning during the session, but I found that the consultant doing all of the writing slightly distanced the client from what was being revised. She was clearly following along, but it seemed she would have benefited more from a asking and answering type of deal.

Consultation One

My first consultation session came out of nowhere. I was waiting after my first two observation sessions for a third when a flustered student came in begging for someone to look over her paper. Each consultant had an appointment or was leaving in a matter of minutes, but this student couldn't wait. "It's due at 5:20 and I just threw it together!" (it was about 3 p.m. at this point). Consultants exchange glances, training consultants look bewildered, but I'm thinking all the time in my head "What if..." I wave my hand a tad at the reception desk and say "I've never done one before, but...I can do it." Time freezes briefly.

"You've never done one?"

"No."

"Have you had a consultant oversee you in a session?"

"No."

Student interjects more or less saying "I'm desperate."

Desperate situations call for desperate measures. Or however the adage goes.

We take a seat in the center, I introduce myself, and optimize my recently acquired skills and observations (and by recently, I mean in the past two hours). I ask her to tell me a bit about the paper, what she would like to focus on, and how she wants to proceed. She refuses to read out loud, so we proceed.

I made the mistake of not reading the title page, which would have cleared up many, many things...it was an article summary. But no, I didn't know this. The client didn't mention this. So I go about the essay -- or what I thought was an essay -- helping her revise her thesis and reconnect what she's arguing in the paper back to the main idea. She exceeded the page minimum by a few paragraphs, so I had her nix a few that were unnecessary to the thesis.

She continually apologized for her grammar and how bad it was and how thankful she was that I was doing this for her. I kept telling her to not be hard on herself, that she had excellent ideas and connected her thoughts very well. Her primary desire of the paper was to target grammar, so we went line by line at a few points going through syntax, occasional diction, and punctuation. I explained as many rules as possible and jotted down examples in the margins. She said she felt smarter already. I told her she already was smart -- she should never be afraid to ask for help, especially in the Writing Center. It's hit or miss sometimes, but we learn from each other. Her professor had instructed them to use three new vocabulary words in the paper, so there were a few words that didn't seem to fit, but we found different places for them.

We rewrote her thesis and a key topic sentence together on scrap paper, and I released her by 4 p.m. to give her time to revise it on her own. Then I read the title page. I said "$(*#(@#" to myself, then realized it was a good thing -- she had reformulated the author's argument into her own words with proper citations, clearly the point of the piece. I congratulated her on making it her own.

We're pretty much friends for life now. And this 55-minute period was one of the most fulfilling times of my life.

Multiliteracy Centers

After discussing in class the vast amount of literacy expanding in our society, I find the idea of a mutliliteracy center appropriate for MSU. When I took an introductory web authoring class here at MSU, I struggled learning the CSS and HTML formats. I was able to catch on after a little help from the professor, but having somewhere else on campus to turn to for consulting would have helped me a great deal. There are many students interesting in graphic design and digital rhetoric who could also use consulting. MSU offers the Professional Writing program that covers many of these other literacies. If the University offers this kind of program then there is a good amount of students who may need help in areas outside of the basic sense of writing, such as papers and essays.

In order to have a center that helped with web authoring and other professional writing and digital concerns there needs to be more support from the University. If students were aware they could join the staff to consult in these areas, I'm sure some would be very interested. I guess I look at the situation as one where helping students shouldn't be limited when possible. Expanding the Writing Center to help these areas would only be beneficial. But expanding our Writing Center can only be done with the help of experienced student and faculty. I think it is a great task the Writing Center should consider over the next few years. Michigan State University could be one of the next leading multiliteracy centers.