11/01/09-11/07/09

Once again time for the weekly status report. I heard a rumor that supposedly the required visits for lab reports are soon approaching their deadline. I'm neither relieved or upset by this news, to me lab reports were easy to handle because I felt I had a good understanding of the requirements by the end of it. More importantly I knew what the experiment was so I didn't have to focus on that as much. It was interesting to see though all the different ways students handled the report. It wasn't just the same thing over and over again.

Interestingly enough with said deadline approaching I had two no-shows this week. I think what happened is they might have scheduled their visit in advance and then forgot about it and came in earlier. Hard to tell. I believe next week I have my first official e-mail consultation, I admit I'm a little excited for that and want to see how well I do. As was discussed in class today it seems like certain student drama is picking up. I won't go into much exposition as I know the followers of this blog are well aware, but I will just reiterate that the seriousness of the issue seems to be increasing. I found myself having to talk over said individual today during a consultation and I'm sure the student was getting some sense of the bad vibes as well.

Nevertheless I think my consultations went relatively okay this week. It seems like a lot of the Bio students have just required being able to hear their papers and have been able to notice a lot of the things which could use tweaking. I've always made sure to let them know that the Center is not just for required visits, but for any type of writing they can think of. I'm trying my hardest to spread the word because I would love to see how these individuals put their writing to other uses.

This week was also when I finally began to decide on a topic for my final papers. I haven't chosen articles yet, but I think Writing Center community, more specifically between Veterans and newbies, will be my focus. Admittedly this is a little ironic since I haven't gone to the karaoke nights or been much of blog conversationalist. Nevertheless I do see the value of seeing people who understand what it's like to be in the Center, which has its own special type of connection.

As for the reading it was actually kind of fun to return to "Minimalist" and "Critique of Pure Tutoring." I had come across both these articles putting together a final paper for my Rhet Comp class and it was good to look at them now in more detail and with a different perspective since I was now a consultant myself. Authority of the consultant has been a concern for me lately. I think I generally am a little too direct in my tutoring style, the clock is still always looming. What I appreciated about the two pieces was how they showed that sometimes one approach is appropriate and the next a different one is required.

It's crazy to think that the end of the semester is steadily approaching, despite all my attempts to avoid it I'm thinking a lot of writing projects will be on the horizon. I will just have to do the best I can.