Shadowing session 10/29/2010.

For this session I was unable to make it because I have been sick with some sort of stomach virus since Thursday. I have not yet fully recovered but I think I am almost there. Not attending shadowing was unfortunate but today I had my consultation with Long about my English paper. Apparently our teacher was disappointed in our midterm results, so he has offered us the chance to rewrite the paper in hopes of getting a better grade. I was very relieved at that because now Long's consultation will help me even more as I begin to think about a rewrite or modification of the paper. Long had some very practical advice from me and I feel more motivated to begin my revision now. He helped me revise my thesis, and although I chose not to share my teacher's comments with him, he had a very similar approach to the revision that the professor had, which is very impressive considering he does not have as much experience writing English papers as my professor does.

The power of failure.

This week Professor Dolson asked us to write about failure and what that means to us in terms of personal growth. I have been quite busy this week so I only just got around to writing about the subject, but I think its an important one because people have lots of contrasting ideas about it. Some people are under the impression that failure, or making mistakes, is a prerequisite of success. Without it, how can we learn and grow into successful people? Others advocate the notion that failure is not necessary; that is, a person who has always been successful will continue to do so without ever making serious mistakes or ever truly understanding how to fail and how to learn from it. Personally, I believe that it is impossible to go through life without committing a mistake or not failing at something. I've had my share of failures and mistakes, be it academic or personal, and I continue to learn from them and grow as a person every day. This same notion applies to writing, as getting a bad grade on a paper is not the end of the world. When we understand what we do wrong and learn to correct it, we get the most benefit from failing. That way, we won't do it again in the future.

Digital stories.

This week we watched everyone's digital story and talked briefly about each of them in class. I think our class did an excellent job on the stories considering this was the first time most people had done a digital story project. Having done this in the past, I noticed that our stories had a lot more sense and direction in terms of content and actual "story-telling" than the stories from my class back in sophomore year. I guess this is because this class is full of talented writers who have the ability to modify their forms of expression across different media and "paper," so to speak. Also, the audience grade idea was a good one, and I think most people did well in terms of how their peers graded them.

Shadowing session 10/22/2010.

Unfortunately, the writing consultant that I regularly shadow did not show up today. So instead I took it upon myself to finish helping Long edit his paper, which is actually due later today. Last night I had my consultation with him and I think it went really well. It shows from his edited draft that I gave him some direction for where he wanted to go with the paper and thesis, and I'm glad that he was able to synthesize all the advice that I gave him. I have no doubt that he will ace the paper.

Shadowing experience 10/09/2010.

This update comes a bit late in the week as I plan to discuss my shadowing experience from last week. This session was very interesting as the only person that came in for a consultation had questions about a graduate school application. She wanted some advice from the consultant regarding the essay portion of the application, and my observations of their consultation was quite interesting. The consultant used the same process theory that one would use to write an English paper or a Poli Sci paper. It seemed that the tutee was quite nervous about applying and really wanted to make sure her essay was free of errors and logical inconsitencies. It seems very interesting to think about the job description of a writing consultant and then imagine helping a student on grad school essay. One might not traditionally think of this as the role of the consultant, but I feel it is important that we are prepared to edit any kind of writing.

Happy Fall Break!

A post from one of my favorite online comic strips XKCD..

I hope everyone has a great fall break. See you all next week!

Writing across genres and subjects.

A couple of hours ago I was thinking about how vastly writing can differ when it crosses genres and subject matter, and how this relates to our task as a writing consultant. An integral part of helping tutees with their writing is to understand the assignment, and on a deeper level, to get an idea of what kind of writing is expected from the student. For example, within the English courses, one can be expected to write papers on a variety of things. I wrote a few papers on novels in my modernism class, and now I have to do an in-depth paper on poetry in the Milton seminar that I'm taking this semester. Writing about prose is very different than writing about poetry, and the strategies that a writer needs to adopt for each kind of writing are very different and require time and practice to master. As both a writer and a writing consultant, I think it will be very important to keep these ideas in mind when helping a tutee improve their writing because the strategies that I choose to share with them will differ based on the kind of writing they are asked to produce.