Hey guys. I'm kinda in a slump right now. I have a super cool headache. ~
Receiving the new syllabus in class today made me so nervous! Is it possible that we really have less than 5 weeks left? So crazy. And judging by the amount of stuff I have to do, I'm sure the weeks will fly. Summary, reflection, an education research paper, another reflection, and the ever so daunting pedagogy. Oh and then a final project for astronomy. AHHHHH.
Sophomore year is quickly approaching, and I'm really excited to work in the Writing Center.
Side note: screw all the people in the Hollenbeck Lab right now. SHUT UP. This is a quiet zone or something, right??
Anyways, the mock sessions today were really interesting. Too often I assume that our work in the writing center will strictly involve "less experienced" writers, but that is far from the truth. It is entirely possible for a writer to bring in a dense, well-written, almost finalized draft of a paper that is on a subject I don't know about. Previously, I would have thought that I would be able to handle a paper of an advanced level, but the one in class today made me really nervous.
I have no problem flat out telling the writer that I am unknowledgeable of his topic. I'll admit to not reading a particular book, not knowing anything about history, or not understanding technical scientific ideas. What I'm afraid of, however, is not being able to help. The paper we looked at today seemed finalized to me. I had no suggestions. I had no commentary. How do you deal with that in the center? Should I just become really picky and find something minuscule that could be changed?
Sarvanni said something really interesting in class. She said, "I forgot, the writer is aloud to be right." So true. So maybe in this scenario we can comment on positive aspects of the paper, and have conversation with these advanced writers that centers on our understanding of the point they are trying to get across. At the end of the discussion, we may not have any critiques, but at least we can provide a sense of reassurance for the writer.
Regardless, I still hope writers don't come to me with finalized papers. I know no paper is perfect, but providing no constructive criticism would make me feel like I didn't help the writer at all.
I didn't hear when Sarvanni said that. That's a really good point though. That definitely reassures me. I get scared that I won't be able to help too and that comment just goes to show that maybe we don't need to critique, maybe we just need to tell them what we see, whether it's good or bad.
ReplyDeleteOh and by the way, I like how you used the ~
If you think about it from another angle too, we'll learn something by reading a good paper that could help us out in the future. I think that's another cool thing about our job-we're not the only ones teaching.
ReplyDeleteAlso, today's paper really challenged me for the reasons you listed above: no knowledge of the topic, and it was well-written. I definitely agree that the writer can be right. Be confident, Sarah, papers like these may be better than having to fix every comma splice :)
I definitely agree with your last statement, Sarah. If the paper is finalized and there's hardly anything to do, I would kind of feel that I completely wasted the writer's time in coming to the writing center. During class, I didn't really know what to do with that completed paper; even though I think I grasped what the writer was saying, it didn't help that it was so technical (as a literary analysis can be) that I was almost afraid to even suggest something to fix (if there was anything to fix). I guess we just have to take each session individually and hope that we don't get too many of those completed ones, haha.
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