Writing: It's a Collaboration

Last night I went to a friend's apartment in the hopes of getting help on my Jepson Leadership School application. By that point I had about 2/3 completed but needed a lot of help. My friend Carly, who is currently in the Leadership School, read through the first question and my response. At first I was nervous to have her read my writing because I tend to be rather sensitive when it comes to criticism (no matter how constructive it may be). Like any good consultant, Carly went over all of the positives in my answer. This helped to build my confidence and made it a lot easier to hear some of the suggestions she had. She could tell I had a few insecurities about my answer and decided to have me read it out loud. After reading through it I could see exactly what I wanted to change and what didn't work. We talked through the problems and without even going back to the writing, I had a much better understanding about what I wanted to write.

I had yet to start the last question which asked: "pick a book that we have read in a previous class and describe why it would be beneficial to implement it into the leadership curriculum". After initially reading the question I had no idea what I would write about. I had only taken a few classes where we read full books and I couldn't really remember what most of them were about. Carly had the suggestion that I go through the essays I wrote from last year to get ideas and refresh my memory. I read over an essay that I wrote in my Anthropology 101 course last fall and was pleasantly surprised. I forgot about an ethnography I read and wrote a paper on about the drug trade in East Harlem, New York. I was able to form a great answer to the question and ended up feeling very positive about my writing.

Overall, the whole experience of working with someone else on my writing was very beneficial. I don't normally have other people read over my work but I felt like if I want to be a good writing consultant, I have to understand what it is like to be in the writer's shoes. I now know the kind of sensitivity writer's harbor over their writing and how to help them simply by getting them to talk about their writing. Now I am very excited about being able to help someone else in the same way Carly helped me!

My most common mistake

For homework over the weekend we were assigned to read "Under the Grammar Hammer" by Douglas Cazort. He mentions all different kinds of common grammatical errors but focuses on the 25 most common. After class we were told to pick the error that we make the most in writing and I picked out two that are quite common in my writing. The first one that I am guilty of making is the "unnecessary shift in tense" which happens all to often. A technique that I learned in high school that helps me avoid this mistake is to read through an essay and underline all of the forms of the verb "to be". At the end of the essay I go back and look at all of the underlines verbs and make sure the tense is consistent. The seconds mistake that I tend to make is the "unnecessary shift in pronoun". This is by far my most common mistake because it is fairly easy to skip over in proofreading. It usually happens when halfway through my writing, I realize I have been saying you, or one, and I decide to change it and don't go back to change them all.

Right on Track

Last night while Michael and I were waiting in the Writing Center for our consultants I tallied up how many points I have so far. I have racked up about 50 points so far which I feel is at the right pace to get the full 80 by next week. I am trying to space out my comments and posts in order to not save too many for the last few days of the mid term or too many at the beginning. I feel like this is important because even though the posts are about points, they are also about free thinking. I think of my blog for this class as being more than just an assignment but rather a portal through which I can express any thought about writing that comes to mind. For instance, I just had a mini panic attack thinking about all of the essays I have to write by mid-October, and I would be happy to write an entire post about it. I hope it doesn't sound like my blog is my therapist but rather a place where I can relay any thought that comes to mind without the fear of being shut down.

What writing center?

It's currently 8:20 in the Writing Center and I am sitting with Michael anxiously waiting the arrival of our consultants. Unfortunately, I have the feeling that neither are going to show up and we will be left empty handed. Fortunately, we did not spend those 20 minutes twiddling our thumbs, but instead talking about the Writing Center's role on Richmond's campus.

Michael told me that when he asked his friends about the location of the Writing Center on campus, most of them were not sure. However with my friends, almost all of them knew where the Writing Center was but only because most of them happen to be writing consultants. Then we began to speak about the different options writing consultants have in terms of who the consult with. My friend Molly is a consultant and was assigned at the beginning of the semester a freshmen seminar. This seemed rather advantageous because 1. she has definite times where she consults with students and is never left wondering if she will have a consultation that day and 2. she has a sense of that curriculum of the course that she is assigned.

Going back to Michael's point, it seems to me that assigning consultants to freshmen seminars is a great way to promote the value of the Writing Center. Too often students come onto campus as first year students and assume that they can coast by writing the same way they did in high school. By assigning a class to a consultant, it gives students who may be too timid or reluctant to seek help an opportunity to do so. Also, given that they leave the Writing Center having acquired knowledge about writing that they did not have previously, the promotion will be done inevitably.

But alas, it is 8:30 and our consultants have still yet to show up. Perhaps there is another Writing Center on campus that Michael and I are not aware of, but it's getting late and I have a lot of work to do. At least I had Michael here to keep me company and chat about the possibilities in our future as writing consultants.

How to define literacy

In class today we read Rachel's paper on the article on the literacy in
digital storytelling and the following question was posed: What is
literacy?

I decided to write a blog post about it after class today so I did not
forget my initial thoughts on the subject. While discussing the meaning of
literacy, someone mentioned the idea of being literate in different forms
of media. For example, being computer literate means having an understand
of how to use technology in a productive manner. Also, being music
literate means being able to read notes and understand them in a musical
sense that is conducive to a language.

After giving those ideas some thought, I feel that being literate in any
field means having a good understanding of that particular subject. Also,
it is having the ability to interpret the given message in the way it was
intended. Being literate in a academic sense means being able to read the
words on a page and synthesize them in your mind to formulate ideas. In
regards to the article, the author presents the idea of being "media
literate" in the present day. To better understand this point, let's go
back 50 years.

50 years ago, to be literate simply meant to be able to read. Now, in
2010, that meaning stays the same, but another layer is added. Being
literate nowadays is having the ability to communicate not only through
spoken word and writing, but through digital media. Digital storytelling
is a perfect medium through which students are able to write in the
traditional sense, but also incorporate the technologies that are
prevalent today. This technique helps students to become literate in the
modern sense, rather than just the traditional.

Digital stories in a digital world

In reading the article, "At Last: Youth Culture and Digital Media: New Literacies for New Times", the question was posed in my mind about what the role of digital storytelling is in modern education. The article addresses the different forms of representing a story. It addresses the use of sound and word in a story and what it projects onto the audience.

Having made a digital story before, I can speak from experience in saying that the use of a digital story is much more than a different medium through which one can tell a story. The juxtaposition between audio and images evokes a whole different kind of emotion within the audience. When one reads an essay, often the voice of the writer is not fully understood or recognized. There is something about actually hearing the voice of the author that makes it different for the viewer. Also, often the intentions of certain words or remarks in writing are fuzzy so when they are presented in a digital story, it is much more clear as to what their point was.

The point that I drew the most from in the article was the following, "we can helpfully draw on interdisciplinary insights from fields such as communications theory, film studies, visual culture, semiotics, and the ethnography of media," (331). Writing can often be two dimensional; there are words on a page and the reader is reading those words. In a digital story, so many more themes and elements can be brought to light that it brings a whole new idea to the story.

More than just an "A"

At the end of last class, Professor Dolson posed a very interesting question. She said,

"If most people are coming into the writing center in order to get an A on their paper, what is our role as consultants?"

After she asked this question, I wrote it down and thought about it for awhile before actually writing this post. The following day I asked a friend of mine who works in the writing center what she thought the answer to the question was. She said that all too often students come in who are somewhat reluctant to be there and could not care less about how their writing changes but more about the grade they receive. She did say though that there are students out there who go to the writing center in the hopes of achieving more than just a grade, and that's what makes working the writing center worthwhile.

Once I heard her say that, I was brought back to my initial thoughts in class on Wednesday. For me, as a writing consultant, I will always try and help the writer as much as possible. The way I think of it, the paper that we edit is merely a medium through which we change the writer. Those kind of changes make it worthwhile for people to visit the writing center not only because of the grade they receive but also because of the improvement in the actual process of writing.

Writing center: it's not a fix-it shop!

After reading Stephen M. North's article on the role of writing centers in students' academic lives entitled "The Idea of a Writing Center", I realized the importance of understanding what they are really about. North begins his article discussing the common misconceptions of writing centers which are:

1. Writing centers should only be used by those with "special problems".
2. They are meant to be "fix-it shops" for writers looking for a fine tuning in grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure.

He states that these misconceptions would not be a problem if they weren't a widespread view held by Universities around the country. He brings forth several articles written by respected professionals who note that the role of a writing center is to help those who need it most. I agree that this view is extremely problematic because it spreads the idea that only those who are desperate need help. The reality is that all writers should have others proofread their work in order to facilitate different perspectives. Everyone has the capacity to become a better writer not matter how skilled he or she is in the classroom.

The most important point I believe North made in his article was about the real role of a writing center. He writes, "in a writing center the object is to make sure that writers, and not necessarily their texts, are what get changed by instruction," (North 38). This is one of the better points that North makes in his article because it clarifies his view that it is not about the physical writing that a writer brings into the center, but the writer themselves that is being amended. He goes on further to explain that in the process of a tutor working with a writer, the talking is of the utmost importance. It gives the writer a chance to communicate their problems or ideas in a way that is much more direct and personal than in a piece of writing. If a writer comes by and drops of his or her work expecting for it to be modified for the better without any input from themselves, not much can actually be done. Writing centers give students the chance to go about writing from a different angle and in turn is very beneficial to those who take advantage of it.

Not just a writing tutor..

After reading Chapter 2 in The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors entitled "Inside The Tutoring Session", I got to thinking about the importance of a writing tutor. At first while reading the chapter I thought about the basic purpose of a writing tutor: to help a writer with his or her writing. Sounds simple enough.

But as I kept reading I thought more about what a writing tutor does that is not as concrete as correcting someone's paper. In Chapter 2 there is a mock conversation between a frazzled writer and a well-trained tutor. The writer comes into the the Writing Center unsure of his assignment and confused as to how he should approach the essay. The tutor does something known as "active listening" which I found to be quite interesting. She uses phrases like, "What I'm hearing you say is...," "I can hear that...", and other types of feedback that show the writer that she is truly listening to his concerns. In addition to these remarks, the book mentions how she uses body language as a way of showing "friendliness and approval".

The reason this part of the Chapter grasped my attention is because I realized that the role of the writing tutor is not just one of mechanical value where they are presented a problem and in turn fix it. Instead, they are meant to be there as a sense of comfort and understanding. Most of the time tutors are confronted with worried writers who have nowhere to begin and have to find a way to calm them down. By being an active listener, using reassuring body language, and helping them work through the problem, it makes the whole process of writing move more smoothly.

What are the liberal arts, anyways?

Today in class we got to talking about liberal arts and what they really mean. Various people attempted to answer the question but it wasn't until several people spoke that the real meaning of the term rose to the surface.

In the middle of the conversation I began thinking about my Leadership 101 class in which I am currently enrolled. On the second day of class we discussed a commencement speech given by a man named Andrew Abbott. His speech addressed the purpose of education and how often students at liberal arts schools get too caught up with the major and minoring business and forget why they are really there. Abbott discusses how there is no direct correlation between what you major in, and what you pursue in life. Plenty of doctors got their Bachelor's in sociology, anthropology, or even business. Abbott asks in the beginning of the speech, "what is the purpose of education?" and concludes by saying that education has no purpose, but instead education is the purpose.

Being at a liberal arts college is not about remembering every single fact, quote, or equation because quite frankly, a few years from now, we won't remember a thing. Being here is about developing our intellectuality in a way that would not be possible anywhere else. When you come to the University of  Richmond, you are required to take a language, first year seminar, and gen-eds among other things. Although you may not be as interested in biology as they are sociology, it gives you a chance to explore and think in a way you may not be used to.

After everyone had pointed out the aims of liberal arts and education in general, it was clear to me that Abbott hit the nail on the head. We are here not to learn a specific trade or skill and use only one part of our brain, but to learn how to think, analyze, and interpret information in a way that is not only beneficial to us in the long run, but to society as a whole.