The semester continues to wind its way along and I’m starting to feel the stress building up. Lack of sleep is getting to me and it makes consultations a little difficult because burning eyes is never conducive to starting a pages of tiny text. Nonetheless I’m continuing to push on and help people, which is really what counts. I’m noticing a lot of Comm 101 papers coming in as of late and feel that I’m starting to be pretty skilled with handling them. I know what the requirements are and depending on their current draft or lack thereof I know what to do.
It seems like a lot of the students are engaged in just the brainstorming section, like they’re not sure where to go. This really let me practice my brainstorming skills because up until now I haven’t been able to use them much. I find I enjoy writing down outlines using the student’s own words and handing it to them saying “See? You had more going on in your head than you might have originally thought, put it to good use.” On Thursday I tried something I hadn’t done before. A student was brainstorming for the Comm 101 paper and we had five minutes left. After thinking for a moment I prompted the student to free write, having heard that her typical writing style was just to sit down and write. For whatever reason I felt prompted to do that, she might have just written how her consultant was a weirdo but I hope maybe some good may have come from it.
Another particular consultation of interest happened on Thursday. I went to the browser to see what my appointments were for the day and saw one of them was about Health Care Reform. My initial thought was of dread because I figured it’d be some sort of griping about how our President is a socialist but forced myself to keep an open mind. That didn’t turn out to be the subject at all, but a completely different viewpoint. He was having a little trouble with the research, though, so I told him to check out the BSU library databases as well as played Devil’s Advocate for a bit to help him find places he could make his argument stronger.
I was talking to Rob today and told him how it boggled my mind how few people know about the great resource of the library database. To me that is one of BSU’s only redeeming scholarly qualities that good work has been put into. It’s a wonderful resource and I wonder if there’s any sort of way we can make it more public.
Today’s readings were rather exciting for me because they’re starting to talk about e-mail consultations. In a way that was how I got my start consulting, helping out friends and family as they would send me their papers. I’m looking forward to what help I can offer. I did have some concerns from the reading which I wrote down on my discussion questions, such as how much we should try to establish a rapport and what levels of formality are appropriate but we pretty much answered those in class.
I haven’t begun on the e-mail assignment yet but hope to do so in the near future. I’m really excited to see how it all works and how I’ll handle it.
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Hi, Ben.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to hear you're enjoying working with Comm students. I visited their sections, and I encouraged them to come in for brainstorming because I was hoping they would be more engaged in the idea of what the Writing Center can help them with. This is difficult in many required visits, but I've been hearing good things from the Comm folks about help with brainstorming. Perhaps this is something I'll continue to suggest to teachers who are considering requiring visits.
And you're right--BSU has fantastic databases! We really do try to cover them in English 102, but many students still don't know about them. The library offers mini workshops to help students, but not all students go. I think pointing them out to students (even if it's just one person at a time) is something that does make a difference, and I'm glad you're doing so in the Center.
I'm looking forward to reading your email consultation, Ben! Good luck on it!
Enjoy your weekend.
mk