The power of speech and conversation.

Today I had a huge presentation to make about Milton's Areopagitica in my English 400 level seminar. I think overall I did a good job, but it is very intimidating making a presentation that lasts approximately an hour and in front of people who know exactly what you are talking about at all times, especially the professor. I stayed up late last night working it out and organizing it to the best of my ability, yet I still found it hard to organize my thoughts as I spoke because I felt that I digressed a lot. This got me to thinking that conversation about literature and specific topics can be really helpful in trying to put those ideas into writing. Perhaps trying to organize a presentation and talk about it in a logical and coherent manner will make the ideas stick better on paper than they do in speech. Just a thought that I had...

Midterm self-reflection.

I never thought I get a chance to write a blog post in class. I am writing this reflection as part of an in-class exercise to understand where I am in the class right now and whether or not I am happy at this point. Personally, I think I am doing fine so far. I am starting to understand what it means to be a writing consultant (rather than a proofreader) and also learning a lot from the readings and editing other people's essays. Probably the most useful experience in terms of learning to be a writing consultant is the shadowing process. Seeing a writing consultant in action really helps to put things into perspective in the sense of what my job demands will be like and what others will expect of me, including my peers and my superiors. Also, I think a hands-on experience of this kind is invaluable in learning how to deal with people who only want their papers edited and do not require the full "spectrum" of the services we are supposed to provide. I do wish I had more time to post blogs and comment on other people's blogs, but I find myself swamped with work from other classes. I guess taking five units is not as easy as I thought. In any case, I think that I will easily be able to accomplish my goals in this class. I just need to stay focused and put in more effort into doing work outside of the class, especially blogging, which I actually enjoy doing. As the middle of the term approaches I want to try my best to post as many blogs as possible and try to develop my ideas as a future writing consultant so that I am better prepared for the second half of the semester.

First shadowing experience.

This past Friday I had my first shadowing experience at the Writing Center. I'm signed up for one hour every Friday morning, from 10 AM to 11 AM. I shadow Chris Cacace, who just started working there since he had only taken ENG 383 last spring. I thought the whole experience was actually pretty cool. Chris was booked that morning, but I only got to see him in action with the person who booked the appointment from 10 to 11 that morning. His first appointment was a girl who came in without a paper and only ideas to discuss. She wanted help regarding her thesis and also to improve her understanding of the assignment. Chris looked over the assignment, which turned out to be a leadership paper, and gave her some advice regarding how to go about tackling the assignment and what ideas she might use for her thesis. Chris let me look at the assignment sheet, and I thought it was really vague and quite hard considering that there was no clear indication as to how the questions addressed in the assignment would be answered. Chris did an excellent job trying to teach the girl how to write for an assignment such as hers and not simply help her draft a thesis and outline for her paper. In my opinion, this is what a writing consultant should be doing, and I think that the girl left satisfied with the help that she got from Chris. Overall, my first experience as a shadow was great, and I am looking forward to next Friday's session.

Writing consultants for digital stories?

During my reading of "Youth Culture and Digital Media: New Literacies for New Times" by Glynda Hull, there was a pending question at the back of my mind: is the job description for a "writing consultant" going to encompass more than just writing on paper? As difficult as it is to improve a writer's ability to write academically in the traditional essay form, can you imagine what will happen when technology is thrown into the mix? Are we going to be editing digital stories and improving not just the written content, but also the audio-visual content too? I see this as an issue further down the line of technological advancement simply because, right now, traditional academic writing is still at the core of how professors and students interact with each other on an intellectual level, and the use of digital media is only recently gaining popularity amongst writers and professors who incorporate aspects of digital media creation into their classes. So my question is, should writing consultants be expected to help students with digital media projects? The closing of the "digital divide" will soon create an academic world in which the majority of students (and teachers) are well-versed in the use of computers and technology to create academic material that transcends formal essay/report writing. It seems like writing centers will need to incorporate this change of academic landscape into their training programs in order to keep up with the vast technological changes that occur every day.

Responding to Criticism and Praise of Writing Centers

Reading through some of the highlights of Jane Cogie's article "In Defense of Conference Summaries: Widening the Reach of Writing Center Work," I noticed that there were some points that I agreed with and some points that I disagreed. For example, the idea of conference summaries seems good in theory, but I don't think that tutors should always have to summarize the conference simply because they had a session with a tutee. Sometimes writers, including myself, go to the writing center for brainstorming ideas or simple thesis checks that have nothing to do with an actual draft or concrete piece of writing. I agree with Cogie's idea that information from the writing center to the instructors should be "as limited as possible," because at the end of the day, the whole point of going to the writing center is to get your work evaluated without actually having it formally graded. The writing center, in my opinion, exists as an extension of the writer's mind and desire for external opinion regarding his/her ideas and writing style and function; teachers should be as far-removed from that process as possible. If a writing center can encourage student writers to go and get suggestions or ideas from writing consultants out of their own accord (not forced by their teachers), then it has succeeded.

College Mentoring Program: A Reflection

This weekend a part of our class got a chance to talk to some high school seniors about their college essays and the ideas (or lack thereof) that they had regarding regarding what they wanted to write about. This was part of the College Mentoring Program from the Center for Civic Engagement, and I actually thought it was a really interesting and hopefully helpful experience for the seniors that we talked to. It kind of makes me wish that I had some college students come talk to me when I was applying for colleges back in my senior year of high school. I was paired up with Julia because there weren't enough seniors for each of us to talk to, and both of us had our share of time with the high school senior we were grouped with. Our senior was interested in film and directing movies, and he gave us a list of potential schools that he had wanted to apply to for that reason. It seems that both Julia's and my advice to him was to be honest about what he wanted to do and to write about it in his college essay. He seemed enthusiastic about his ideas, and I think that our advice and encouragement will help him when it comes time for him to sit down and write his essays. I think its very important, especially during the college admissions process, to be honest about who you are and to avoid the tendency to "bullshit" your way through the essays. In reality, a college essay is the only way a school can really know who you are and get an idea about what kind of person you are. SAT scores, grades, and all those other quantitative figures just make you another statistic. Writing, however, is a true expression of individuality and personal thought, and it is important for everyone, not just high school seniors, to remember that.

Is the number rule really that bad?

After looking through some of the other blogs in the class, it seems that quite a few of my fellow writing consultants in-the-making had renounced the "rule of three" or "five-paragraph essay" concepts because they did not think that these rules gave them the flexibility and sophistication to meet the more elevated requirements of the college paper assignment. Even though I agree that it would probably take a prodigiously adroit writer to write a five-paragraph essay for a minimum twelve to fifteen page assignment, the number rule really does have its use beyond the vicissitudes of high school academia. One simply needs to expand on the numbers rather than lock themselves into the idea that an essay needs to be five paragraphs long or have just three supporting arguments to a thesis in order to be successful and comprehensible. For example, instead of having a rigidly structured layout such as the generic five-paragraph all-rounder, one could expand simply by adding subtopics, and consequently, additional supporting arguments to the main supporting evidence. If an introduction has three main supporting examples that attempt to prove the thesis, then each one of these ideas can have its own set of three supporting ideas.

Hypothetically speaking, let's say I want to write about why the Obama administration was the best in the history of the United States, I could have as my thesis three main reasons that support this argument. I can say that his social policies, international policies, and economic policies (here is that "rule of three" idea) were nothing but beneficial to the progress and development of the United States. If I spent one paragraph discussing each of these subclauses, I would have my five-paragraph essay. But if I took each one of these ideas and added three supporting ideas (eg. his social policies were excellent because they furthered educational development, improved welfare for the impoverished, and guaranteed universal health insurance - having groups of three makes the process much more logical and easy to follow), I would have a much longer essay that would provide the in-depth analysis, critical thinking, and attention to detail that most college professors want to see in their students' papers. By expanding upon these number rules, you can still write a paper that is worthy of your professor's time (and maybe even get a good grade on it). There is no need to abandon the number rule because it allows us to logically structure and organize essays so that they are easier to conceptualize and also that we are forced to look for more evidence or supporting argumentation that will only strengthen the paper.