Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Any more buffalo than that and I'm done. I tend to get words stuck in my head in the same way people get songs stuck in their head.
*BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO*. Thanks mike.
But thinking about this makes me wonder, why are the Buffalo Buffalo so mean to their fellow Buffalo buffalo? Moving on:

Today's session was so extrememly helpful. I brought in a piece of crap summary --partially because I did it right before class, and partially because I had a really hard time deciding what to focus on in summarizing Muriel Harris's article. It wasn't that I didnt understand the article, there was just so much information! I couldn't figure out a way to efficiently and successfuly simplify it. Kelsey really helped me break down her article and gather my thoughts.

In general "Making Our Institutional  Discourse Sticky: Suggestions for Effective Rhetoric" is about the way writing center's present themselves to institutional audiences. She explains that we tend to define ourselves by what we are not. We aren't a fix it shop, we do not write papers for students, we do not work with only remedial students. Harris notes that this is a poor way to define ourselves; "If we define ourselves by what we are not, we cannot be much to ourselves or others." She says that instead, we should define ourselves in terms that are sticky: "writing that is positive, appeals appropriatley to our audiences, is highly memorable, and is concrete and specific." In writing with stickyness in mind, people "will understand and correctly remember who we are and what we contribute to the process of writing."

Wow. Okay maybe I can incorporate some of what I just said in this blog into my new summary.

As you can see, the over all arguement of the article makes sense. (At least it makes sense to me). But I think what really threw me is the size and structure of her arguement. In her introduction she bassically gives a mission statment of the article:
"I offer here cautionary advice to help avoid some tempting morrasses to unwittingly fall into as well as some more solid ground to stroll along when composing our institutional prose"

So then in the body of the piece she gives three or four methods we SHOULDN'T use to present the center, along with psychological research supporting her arguement for each example, and then she finally concludes with the right way to present the center. I had a really hard time summarizing all of this. By citing her research, was I getting too detailed? Should I incorporate a summary of each of her examples of "the wrong ways" to define the center?

This 20 page article is separated with sections with headings. I initially tried to include a bit from each section, but doing so forced me to create a really awkward body paragraph with little flow. Its really a gross paragraph. I'm actually super embarrased that we have to turn our draft into mike. I would never turn in something with that low of quality.

I've decided to reformat my introduction paragraph with bits and pieces of what I stated above. I'll make a thesis statment of sorts that outlines her article a bit better. I've decided to focus on two parts of her argument, the usagage of negation in defining something, and our tendancy to use abstact, rhetorical language in describing what we do. I'll also summarize her solution to this problem. Okay I feel much better about this.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Everything above that line is a personal rant for my own benifit. I essentially just talked myself through how I'm going to fix this crappy summary. My appologies for being really boring/selfish in this blog. I'm sure you guys don't really care about my plans for revision.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PS. I just realized I wrote the title of the article wrong in my first version of this summary. I such a successful summarizer.~

ooooh!!! on the plus side I just hit the spelling check thing and it didn't highlight anything! Usually I spell really simple words wrong/

I may be a summarizing failure, but today I am a spelling champion!!