Being a Writing Center Kid...

boring paper, but awesome session :)

The other day I went into the writing center with a horrible boring, tedious, disgustingly plain, group research paper for my Languages in Society class I have brought up a few times in class before. I felt really bad about bringing in such a lengthy (14 pages) research paper, but luckily I had Julia for the session. I didn’t think about blogging about this session until I say Alison’s blog ( thank you for that by the way) and I realized that this is also a learning process. Julia was really smily, even though I happened to catch her near the end of her shift, and we were able to joke the whole session about almost completely irrelevant things.

Its alot different going into the center now that I have been on the other side of the table(figuratively). I realize a lot of small things and I can talk to Julia on a more peer based level without feeling disrespectful. I realize we are peers with or without the title of advisor, but something about the fact they the advisers knew so much more than me made it feel like a formal setting. I felt like I could joke with Julia a lot more and admit that my paper was basically going to bore her to death but I had to make sure that it was gramatically correct.

Overall the session went pretty well, we sat by the window, laughed, and got through the whole paper. Julia has a vibe to her that is really relaxing and comfortable. I felt really comfortable talking with her, and even though I could tell she was getting a bit tired by the end of the session, she really tried to look engaged. I really appreciated that, it made it seem like I was able to keep her engaged in a tedious and somewhat overbearing paper that has the word “like” in it about 213 times, if I recall correctly. 

I really like going to the center, and I try to convince my friends that it is not as scary as it seems. They all say it’s just because i’ll be working there next year, but I genuinely do like the center. It is nice to talk about writing and joke about papers, find a way for my ideas to go, figure out what doesn’t work, make the best paper I possibly can. I think I will continue to go next year (especially with the demon’s devils and hellfire class you guys helped me pick out) because even if I am a decent writer, I will never be perfect.

session reflection…another double dip.

I promise I am doing an actual blog post after this, but since you guys don’t get to read my reflections anyways, might as well use it as a blog post. Sorry Mike, don’t read this one haha.

The final session of the year, it’s kind of weird to think of it that way. I think what really made that thought sink in was the fact that we got out other reflections back today. I was a bit tired on Tuesday morning, but I was excited to see where Courtney had gotten with the ideas we had discussed. I was a little bit disappointed when she told me she didn’t have a draft, but I tried to do what I could do with what she could give me. She had her worked cited page, so I looked over that for a while and told her what to do with some of her sources.

            Honestly, I think the best thing I was able to do for her based off of that was to offer up some ideas on how she can incorporate credible sources and to have her outline her ideas. Honestly, I don’t think she was able to type a draft, which I understand. I think when I asked her to talk out her sources and outline her paper; it was a way for her to brainstorm where she wanted to go with the paper, and what else she could incorporate. Courtney is a good writer, and although she didn’t have a draft at the session, I believe she will be able to take what we talked about and apply it in her actual paper. I also hope she takes the initiative to incorporate some more sources before the paper is due.

            She is focusing on Video Games and their effects on childhood development and education as well as social skills. I think this is a fairly good topic that can be broadened and then narrowed down where necessary and she can touch many subjects such as psychology, education and sociology, so I think she has a lot of potential for a good paper overall. I’m just a bit worried about whether or not she will take the initiative to create the paper such a large repertoire of sources can birth. However, I was glad that Courtney was able to take some of the ideas I had given her last time. She still remembered some of the things we had discussed, which made me feel as though she had taken something away from our last session.

            My largest concern going off of this experience and the experiences in sessions to prior to this one, is making sure the writer not only knows where to go but also takes the initiative to go to that place. I am fully aware that this is not in my job description, to make the writer enjoy their topic and fully comprehend the potential that such a topic has, but I want the writers to take their papers to the places they can go. It’s a little saddening to see an amazing idea halfheartedly produced. It is also extremely invigorating to see that same idea taken to its fullest potential or even beyond.

            This session has also taught me a lot about how I approach my sessions. When Courtney showed up without a draft, I suggested that, since we had time, that she could go and print another copy of her draft. When she came back, and still did not have a draft, I asked her to talk me through her ideas and the general outline of her paper. I am almost certain that I have gotten a bit more directive over the past semester that I am not afraid to take on that authority I was so hesitant to take before. After the session, I felt a bit more like I had been that prying annoying teacher. I thought about it for a while and realized I was just trying to find the best way to help her, even if she didn’t necessarily want the help.

            People are not always going to realize the potential they have in writing, and they are not always going to have the enthusiasm going into an idea that I would want or expect when presented with an amazing idea. I want to pull out all of the bits and pieces of the writer’s idea that may seem fleeting and unorganized and ground it in facts, research, and the writer’s personal flare. I want to take whatever I can get out of the writer and show them where they can go from there. It’s not being pushy, or over directive, or in directive, or any of that. I’m doing my job, as a peer, an avid reader, a lover of learning, and an Adviser.

 

English242_Spring12_AlisonBewley: You would think . . .

English242_Spring12_AlisonBewley: Always Beginning

sloppy unpoetic…

For some reason I’m in a thoughtful mood today, so I’m gonna knock out two blogs in one day, seeing as I am thoroughly behind anyways. Here we go:

We’ve been writing these blogs since the beginning of the semester, and I definitely have to apologize to my groups members, because it took me so long to figure out how to actually write these and not bore you guys to death. I have always tried to figure out how you guys were able to write such interesting things and relate them to the center; it took me 5 months to figure out I just had to write period and it would all come together eventually. I was really caught up in the fact that is was technically an “assignment,” that I was being overly formal in a completely casual writing environment. Once again, written kitten helped me get out of a that a bit, and then coming to the realization that I needed to just relax.

The whole point of bringing that up is that I realized I haven’t really shown you guys much about me through these blogs. That’s mostly because I’m really awkward when it comes to speaking about myself and my thoughts through regular writing, so I’ll show you a little bit about my interpretation of writing in general and how I view it in the way I know how to. Poetry. So let’s see where this goes:

Today I sat with a little magnetic clip board on my lap and placed some words against it’s skyline. I watched them rearrange cloud like and dance against the blue and red etched into the paper.They moved and sang and grew and shrunk and aligned and flew and fell and cried. They tap danced against the margins , played hide and seek in the hole punches and arose in black and blue. They mimic queens sometimes, and speak Shakespearean some days, and I just fall subject to their impulsion.

Sometimes I wonder, when I scratch down the world’s they show me, in sloppy unpoetic, how we think we can control the way they float and crash. That we can silence them between some creased pages, and closed bindings. How we think our manipulation of their beauty is migrating towards perfection , when the words can never leave our lips the way they hear themselves.

I am following their footsteps with a fountain of pens and empty pages, they curve onto them and call out the way they want to. They are gun barrel full of daisy, and cello neck full of hollow, they are child full of wanting to be free, and adult wanting to be rebound. They are human and sky and earth and dust and solid and flying.

And I’m just watching the way the pass, trying to catch them down if I can. Trying to be worthy enough to paint them..

Candy Sushi…

So it just dawned on me that in 4 weeks I will be completing my first year of college. In 2 months I will be on a plane, going to a foreign and distant country, and 5 months, I will back on this campus, working at the writing center, and a sophmore. Now, this sudden influx of realization shouldn’t come as a surpise to me, I have been a freshman for  9 months now, I’m pretty sure at some moment in these last few months I realized all of this would happen, but it’s mildly frightening as it all comes closer to reality. Signing the contracts today and planning out our schedules did not really help tame this growing anxiety/anticipation that has been culminating inside me for the last few weeks, but rather sped up the realization process.

Trying to think of my pedagogy, trying to figure out how I am going to address sessions is a little strange for me. My friends all think I’m over reacting when I tell them I don’t exactly know where I want to go with it yet and that that makes me nervous. But I don’t necessarily think that I am…the writing center is a job, yes, but over the past few months, my idea of the center has changed. It’s not just some job I can be half committed to, and manage to get by in. I HAVE to work hard, I have to be at 100% percent capacity when I’m with a student, when I’m not with a student, when I’m thinking up things to do in the center, it’s bigger than me. I guess I got more into this than I thought I would, I started to see it as more than a job, it’s kind of an identifier.

I recent joined Kappa Delta sorority, which is honestly, I think, one of the better decisions I’ve made in my lifetime. I used to make fun of sororities, and diss them, but in actuality, it’s amazing to have that family bond and feel as though you are part of something bigger and better than you ever imagined. I kind of feel that way with the Writing Center here and all of the people in our class.You have that invisible thread tying us all together, and once you’re in it, you’re in it. It’s a huge committment, takes a lot out of you, and gives ample amounts back to you. Yea, I’ll probably kill myself next year with all the classes, jobs, clubs, sorority, type things I will be involved in, but I feel like I still made the right decisions. Though I am slightly nervous about everything ACTUALLY happening…I don’t regret it at all.

All in all,I think everything is starting to tie together, and that is the point where I can start to relax. I was talking to David today about how I feel like all the things I used to describe myself either have a solid base or pull everything together, and how that is what I aim to be for my writers. That’s because those are the things that comfort me the most, knowing where to start and where to end. That way no matter what happens in the middle, you will still feel solid, comfortable, and know where to go. Working at the writing center has become a part of that base, that base of KD,EAS major,Wittenberg Student, Cleveland kid, Ohioan, Artsy. I’m sure that all of my anxiety will go away once it is a tangible change, so I won’t worry about it much, I’ll just go…and wait for it to all tie together.

English242_Spring12_AlisonBewley: Things To Accomplish [Insert Timeframe Here]

Session 2…

Today I had my session with Courtney, and to tell the truth, I wasn’t so scared this time. We sat down, started talking, and it was still a bit awkward but I think that is part of the adjustment process. Overall, I think reading a little bit about the novel before diving into the session helped me. It makes me wonder if it is okay, for example, to look up what a student is working with if they put it in scheduling comments. I think that would be an amazing way to prepare and not go into the session being terrified or completely unaware of what the subject is.

We looked over the essay first and did brainstorming second which is think was probably more beneficial to her. The reading went smooth and she caught a lot of her own mistakes and marked sentences she felt sounded funny. Her paper had a nice flow, albeit a bit repetitive at times (which I pointed out), she still managed to get her point across and make a solid argument despite the two paragraphs she lost the morning of. That really threw me off, when she told me she had lost two paragraphs, I didn’t know whether I should address it or just trust her own knowledge of the subject. I did ask her to summarize her points, but there wasn’t much she could tell me other than “one paragraph was my counterargument, the other was more evidence,” since she didn’t remember word for word.

I found myself suggesting ideas throughout the session and didn’t really know if I was supposed to do that or not. I talked to Mike about it and he said it wasn’t a bad thing, but I felt as though I was being overly directive. I offered a lot of idea like incorporating things about Facebook’s technique for personalized ads and showing how this can be detrimental. He told me, I can give the ideas, but it’s her choice to take the initiative. So I think it is okay to give advice, but maybe next time I could find a less straight forward way to go about it.

I think one thing that really stood out to me, which I again don’t know is a good or a bad thing, is that when I found out she was doing a draft I kind of knew where it could go. Usually with a draft you’re going to have a read through and discuss some ideas. I wouldn’t see this as “predicting” the session or anything, because I didn’t expect it to go in a way, but I expected it to start somewhere. It’s nice to have a little bit of experience and knowledge, because it makes you less nervous when you find out what you’re working with.

Yes, sometimes you may still be a nervous wreck and everything may go wrong, but you know ways to pull it back together after dealing with certain situations. I think experience is the only way to really get comfortable and I am a lot more comfortable that I was at the beginning of the year now.

Sessions…they’re like….Onions!

I think that today’s mock sessions with each other were really interesting. I don’t think it was a waste of time or that they didn’t qualify as a “real session” at all. When we are in the center, we will be working with some people we don’t know, some of our closest friends, people we know are amazing at writing, and people we know are horrible at writing. No matter how close we are to the people, our job is to help them with their writing however we could. Yes, we had that little cheating we could do, physically and vocally being able to say that we don’t know something…but is it our job to act like we know everything?

As soon as Anna Jean brought that up, I thought ‘are we supposed to pretend to know everything?’ are we supposed to be equivalent to professors? Even if we were supposed to be, I’ve had professors admit that they didn’t know something and say that they were wrong. We’re human and don’t know everything, and that’s the main thing our session today taught me. I was so comfortable working with David because I knew he wouldn’t judge me and that he would work with me. Who are we to say whether the students we work with will judge us or not? I think that has been an underlying concern a lot of us haven’t been addressing.

We are allowed to make mistakes; I think that is what the “peer” in peer tutor kind of notates. We don’t know everything, but we’re doing what we can to help, and if we can take that comfort we had in the session with our “peers” today, into our so called “actual” sessions then I’m pretty sure they can be 100% more effective. I was rereading my notes from the beginning of the semester until now, and one thing that turns up frequently is “be comfortable with yourself and your abilities and make the student feel comfortable”.

I was really comfortable today working with David because I realized he didn’t expect me to be perfect and after the session I realized, none of the students do. If you don’t know something, then look it up, apologize and go on an epic scavenger hunt for a thesaurus, or look it up on your laptop, or ask one of the other tutors. It makes you seem more human, it makes the student know you human, it helps you feel more secure knowing you can use the countless resources in the center, and overall it makes the session less about being professional and doing your job effectively and more about doing as much as you can to help the student feel comfortable criticizing their own work and your criticism.

David’s article discussed something I thought was really important, the difference between fungible time, which is more a focus on the clock and the time limit in a session, and epochal time, which is more focused on how much you accomplish in a time period. I think that it is more important to accomplish as much as you can, actively listen and create a comfortable atmosphere in which you and the student interact. We have about as much or even less experience than some of the people we will be working with, so some sessions will be like the one today, some will be like our mock sessions, and some will be like the sessions we had with the 101 session. It’s all about how we approach them, how we choose to conduct our time, and how we as tutors interact with the students. Like the wise words of Shrek(slightly rephrased) Sessions are like Onions. They have layers, and its our choice how much we unravel. :)