Final Project Research

For my final project, I research "Writing Center Satellite Sites".  This was very useful in coming up with how the satellite sites could be organized.  There would be two sites with days and hours that do not overlap so that the Writing Center would not be burdened by excessive scheduling of writing consultants.  Although most of the schools that have satellite writing centers are big state schools, I think that the students in the Business School and who spend the majority of their day in Gottwald performing labs and homework would be more inclined to use the Writing Center if it was closer to where the majority of their classes are held.  Also, on the SUNY website I found a list of suggested writings that students could bring in.  This was a great source for me to include in my brochure because it provide great suggestions of what students at Richmond could bring to the Writing Center.  I also added Digital Story Narratives because digital stories are becoming more and more popular on campus.

Final Writing Center Shadowing

At my final shadowing session at the Writing Center, a girl came in with her essay that related ageism in the book that was read in class with ageism in society today.  The essay was completed, but needed some final edits and clarification.  The writing fellow and I read the essay to ourselves, and she made notes in pencil as she read through.  Once we had completed reading, we went through areas where clarification of how her idea related to her thesis was needed.  In this situation, I would have read the paper aloud because it seemed as though the student was not involved for the first part of the consultation.  Also, the writing fellow missed typos such as "word" instead of "world" when she was reading to herself and she did not mark.  The student then asked if her thesis was clear enough because she knows that in the past her professor has strongly emphasized the thesis in her students' papers.  Together, we were able to create a thesis statement that best represented the argument of her paper.

Writing Center Shadow 7

Last week when I arrived at the Writing Center, the consultant I shadow was there on the computer.  A student was scheduled for an appointment, but unfortunately ended up being a No-Show.  The consultant and I chatted for about twenty five minutes and then she said that there wouldn't be enough time for a consultation and she had a Bible Study meeting at 8pm anyway, so we left.  Although this student did not attend, I feel comfortable with the amount of exposure I have had in the Writing Center.  Throughout this course I have felt more drawn to the idea of working with ESL students or in the Athletic Department rather than the Writing Center in Weinstein or assigned a class.  Working with ESL students interests me because I am an International Business Major and a Spanish minor and learning about other cultures has always fascinated me.  I enjoy hearing about how people interact in other cultures and what education is like for them back home.  Consulting in the Athletic Department also interests me, since I am in the area frequently for cheerleading.  Also, I figure that I can actually meet the athletes whom I cheer for.  Its always strange knowing these football players and basketball players by name and attending all their games, yet having never met the majority of them before.

Proposal for Final Project

For the final project, those of us who wanted to do a project rather than an advice sheet discussed potential ideas.  Some had already figured out what they were doing.  A small group of us who were not quite certain about what we wanted to do for the project discussed ways in which the Writing Center could improve and increase its involvement and availability on campus.  We came up with a number of ideas of how the Writing Center could make itself more aware to students that it is a way to improve all writers, not just those in First Year courses.  One idea we had was to expand the availability of the Writing Center by offering stations in various parts of campus, such as Modlin and Gottwald to attract those students who may be deterred by the long walk at night to the Writing Center in Weinstein.  Also, we discussed holding open hours for students, similar to what the Career Development Center does Monday through Wednesday from 2 to 4pm.  Through this, students can ask about their thesis statements or outline organization or a quick grammar question.  Students will get a taste for what a consultation is like and be more motivated to schedule a full consultation time slot.  As a liberal arts school, there are a wide variety of subjects that students are involved, which all require some sort of writing task.  However, students in the sciences or in Robins School of Business may think the Writing Center would not help them.  This is not true because any kind of writing may be brought to the Writing Center.  The other day Professor Dolson and I talked about how writing is moving away from the third person voice towards the first person, even in formal writing.  As a business major, it is very useful to learn how to present my ideas formally in the first person, something that I am not accustomed to after years of being told that all academic writing must be in the third person.  The Writing Center should advertise that it is available to help with lab reports, speeches, and finance papers.  This would allow more students to realize that the Writing Center truly is a place for the wide spectrum of whatever is writing.  Additionally, the Writing Center does not have to be contained for academic writing.  Students should be open to the idea of bring cover letters for prospective job offers, study abroad applications, and internship reports to the Writing Center as well.  The Writing Center has a great deal of potential in what it can offer students, but it is a matter of putting these ideas into action to make the Writing Center a valuable resource that reaches all students.

Boys and Girls Club Visit 3

Last Monday was our third and final visit to the Boys and Girls Club, when the 7th grade girl I had been working with for the past two visits arrived, we went right to the computers.  Once we loaded up the flash drive onto the computer and found her narrative document, we began to prepare for recording.  First, we read through the document once to make corrections and allow for easier readability.  We also changed some parts to make it more clear to the reader what meaning the student was trying to evoke.  Once we had made all the necessary changes, the student read through her narrative twice to practice before recording.  Although she was still unsure of her reading, I encouraged her to try it out and told her we could try multiple times.  For the first two recordings she had read it all the way through in one segment.  She stumbled over a couple of sentences and hesitated at points, so she wanted to try again.  When I hit play from the beginning by accident, I noticed her face freeze.  I asked her what was wrong and why she stopped speaking, she began to laugh and say that she thought her voice sounded strange over recording.  I explained to her that I felt the same way both times when I did my Digital Story for English 383 and Expository Writing.  It seems to be a common trait that no one likes hearing their own voice over a recording because how we perceive our voice when we are speaking is different from how machinery records it and is different from how others hear it.  I suggested recording from a different approach.  I separated her narrative into shorter segments and told her to just read one segment at a time and to then stop.  She recorded in this manner so that when she did stumble over a word or misread it, we could erase the segment and start it over again, without having to record everything over.  Throughout reading she maintained an even pace.  Her reason for doing this was because she didn't think her narrative was long enough, but in the end it made for an easy-to-understand recording.  Although it may seem like a lot of work for a project that isn't even for school, the girl I was working with seemed still interested in the project and continuing to the next phase of her "Pearl of Wisdom" digital story in which she will add images to her voice.

CMP Tutoring Session 2

On Saturday we met with the students from the College Mentoring Program again to help them with their college essays.  I worked with the same girl that I had worked with last time and she was very proud about the paper she had completed to bring in to the meeting.  We read through her essay and when we came across a typo, she was very defensive about overlooking it, making it evident through her demeanor that she had put in a great deal of work into her essay.  Her essay was about how her grandmother became very sick and began shaking out of coldness.  Because the girl I was working with is the only one in her family who is able to speak English, she called 911.  She then further discussed in her college essay how she felt she her grandmother be put into the back of the ambulance, riding in the car with her mother to the hospital in a panic, and how nerve-wrecking it was to be in the waiting room as her grandmother was with the doctors.  Once she and her mother were allowed to see her grandmother, they cared for her by being very attentive to her motions and assisting her with her bathroom needs.  The student I was working this defined this moment as the time she realized she wanted to become a nurse.  Once we read through the essay, I talked with her about the experience and how that was an excellent choice to explain her career goals.  The prompt for VCU, the nursing program she is interested in, asked the applicant to explain his or her educational and career goals.  Because she had explained her career goal in her concluding sentences, we discussed how she could incorporate what her education goals were and why, which was to ultimately become a nurse.  Once we figured out how we could incorporate her ideas about becoming a nurse and being the first person in her family to go to college into her career goals, we formed sentences as she noted them at the bottom of her page.  After this exercise, we started from the beginning and tried to combine some of her sentences.  As I read aloud, I noticed that her sentences were short and often began similarly, which tends to be a pet peeve of mine in writing.  We were able to figure out what ideas could be combined into one sentence and also tried to eliminate some words that caused wordiness since we had added more to the end.  I discussed with her the changes that I suggested making before she made any edits to her paper and after she made edits, we reread the sentence aloud.  Her paper definitely improved after working together.  She had just needed someone to help her talk out the connections between her education goals and career goals, which is a primary function of writing consultations.

Boys and Girls Club Visit 2

Yesterday at the Boys and Girls Club I worked with the same girl as I had two weeks ago.  She had already had her interview completed last time I was there, and for this time she had gone through and underlined the parts that she thought were important to include in her Digital Story.  We went on the computer and she began to type what she wanted to say in her digital story.  She became frustrated after typing three words because she had not had received any training in typing in her school as I had and it took her a while to type one key at a time.  Although she is a very intelligent girl, this is when I most significantly noticed where the education system that she was in differed from the one I was in when I was in seventh grade.  When I was her age I had a year-long typing class in which we sat at computers for 45 minutes a day and completed a typing program in which we were tested on our accuracy and speed in typing.  Rather than have her spend more time on typing than thinking about what she wanted to say, I typed what she dictated to me for the story she wanted to tell.  Once she went through everything that she thought was important, her content only reached to the bottom of the first page.  I asked her to explain what the pearl of wisdom "if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything" meant to her.  She then elaborated on how that phrase applied to her  Once she was out of ideas for adding to that, she asked me what else she could add.  I suggested that she add more about the woman she interviewed.  As she dictated to me how she knew her, I asked her what other positive qualities the woman she interviewed had and led the student to want to interview this woman.  At the end of the session, an observing student asked the girl i was working with if she could tell her what she had learned from me.  The girl from the Boys and Girls Club initially said that I taught her that longer was better.  She then proceeded to say that I tried to draw detail and more meaning out of what she had said previously in order to make it longer.  Also, the girl said that I made her think about what the significance of everything was that she said and how it all related together.  The observing student's questioning to the girl I was helping allowed me to realize that I actually had helped in her writing.  Not only did I reduce the amount of frustration she would have felt while typing, she also learned to elaborate on the points that most relate to her thesis- the "pearl of wisdom".

Writing Center Shadow 6

Last week at the Writing Center, the fellow that I tutored strongly encouraged me to lead the consultation.  An international student from Singapore came in to brainstorm for his essay for his First Year Seminar class.  The class was about moral and economics in the United States, so his assignment was to compare Adam Smith's ideas with the current recession and the moral of people today and whether Smith's ideas applied.  I thought this consultation went very well for me because it was something that I was interested in and it was just a brainstorming phase.  Consultations that involve structure are the most difficult for me because I have difficulty with thesis statements and structure when writing my own papers.  The student brought in a page of notes he had written for this assignment and we discussed recent scandals in business and policies that have been made.  As a Business major, I found a lot of topics to discuss with him.  Because he is an international student, he was unsure of what was meant by aspects of the economy such as "Federal Reserve Bank" and "Fractional Reserve Banking System".  I was able to explain these topics to him to the best of my ability, but I also told him to consult his professor if he had more questions.  He took down notes of what he thought he could best explain in relation to moral and Adam Smith's ideas.  This consultation was exciting for me because we were discussing topics that interest the student and I and we were in the preliminary phases of planning so there were not specific issues to solve.

Cultural Barriers

For today's class, we read articles about working with ESL students in the Writing Center.  It seems as though the concept of international relations has been coming up in all of my class and that it is currently a very important topic.  Because countries interact regularly and are made up of many different nationalities and cultures, learning habits of different cultures can be beneficial to avoid disrespecting the person you are working with, particularly in the Writing Center.  In my Business Communications class, we focus a great deal on dealing with interpersonal communications abroad.  For instance, in Asia pauses between conversation are common in order to give the decision maker time to contemplate.  However, Americans see these pauses as a chance to provide more input to whatever idea they are trying to sell.  This can be seen as interruptive and rude in other cultures.

Mentoring with Tina

As mentioned in the article, the author is from a background in which her mother and father supported her strongly throughout her education and she never had a doubt in her mind that she would go to college.  This sounds very similar to the type of environment that I grew up in and the majority of students at my high school as well as at University of Richmond.  This article relates to the Boys and Girls Club because like the narrator, we do not know whether these students are engrained with the notion that you can't succeed if you don't go to college.  Although Tina did not have any desire to go to college or even try in high school, she still had powerful ideas.  Unfortunately, the teachers did not give her a chance to express her wisdom before they judged her.  This article exemplifies the old saying "you can't judge a book by its cover".  The teachers marked her down when they saw all the grammatical errors, but they did not understand the message that Tina was trying to convey about the courage in her father's death and his heroic actions.  Passengers on the bus held their belongings closer as she walked passed because they assumed she was mischievous based on her appearance.  Rather than getting to know Tina, the teachers and principal condemned her before getting to the root of the issue.  This story shows that although someone may act tough and as though he or she is not concerned with the future, it is possible that the behavior is a need for friendship.  At the Boys and Girls Club, although the students may seem uninterested with performing the work needed for a digital story, the fact of the matter is that they may just give off that appearance when in reality the new experience excites them.

Writing Center Shadow 5

It seems as though I tend to delay blogging about my Writing Center shadowing sessions until a week later, right before my next session.  Last week, the writing consultant and I discussed an essay with a student in a First Year Seminar class.  The assignment topic was to compare the ideas about racism between two black men.  The student was very confident about his work, which contained a great deal of well developed ideas.  However, some of his ideas did not flow together well and he was missing transitions at times.  In his conclusion, he discussed a point that would have added significance to one of the points he made earlier in the essay.  This student was very interested in why some suggestions made by the writing consultant would work better than what he had originally.  Also, he had his paper completed on the Monday evening, even though the paper was not due until Friday.  This allowed the writing consultant to offer assistance via email to him throughout the week if he wanted to revise sections that he noted had issues.  I thought this was a great way to create a bond with the student being consultant because it is a way to make the student feel confident about his or her writing because the consultant is looking forward to revisiting the piece.

Boys and Girls Club Visit

On Monday, we went to the Boys and Girls Club in Richmond to help the students there plan their digital stories to honor someone in the community and their "pearl of wisdom".  I worked with a 7th grade girl from the community.  She had done her interview and had the responses typed up.  However, to interview her mother's supervisor at the local church, she had simply emailed the questions that the Boys and Girls Club had given her and then the lady responded to each question.  We watched digital stories on YouTube and the one that I had created for class.  It was hard to hear the narrative, but she found the pictures interesting.  I explained to her how she could take pictures of different things to provide a visual for the story she was telling.  She had a digital camera, but I also explained to her that she could find images on Flickr as well by searching.  In regards to the narrative, she seemed wary about how she would create a story from the responses she received.  I explained how she could introduce the woman she interviewed and what meaningful aspects of her life coincided with her Pearl of Wisdom.  The Pearl of Wisdom was "if you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything", which I thought was a great piece of advice.  Between loading videos and the end of a discussion about a component of the digital story, I tried asking her questions about other things, but she would give me one word responses.  Throughout our time together, she seemed unmotivated about the narrative aspect, yet she liked seeing examples of digital stories on YouTube and about the idea of using a digital camera.  I look forward to meeting with her next time to see how she was able to incorporate her voice into what she learned from the woman she had interviewed and what types of images she chooses to support her narrative.

UR Downtown 1

For my meeting with a student at UR Downtown about Digital Stories, I am first going to present a Digital Story to him or her.    I found one on YouTube that I found interesting called Media Influence that a student created for her sociology class.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l-knO8zzmU . This digital story creates emotion, has effective images, and evokes a new perspective from the audience.  I'll explain my process to the student that I used to create my digital story for English 383 and English 103.  First gather information, then create a narrative, then cut it down so it contains the most important information.

Writing Center Shadow 4

Last Monday I went to shadow at the Writing Center.  There was a girl who came in with her paper about a woman rights activist exemplifying her qualities as a leader.  She had sent her essay to the consultant prior to the consultation, so we were able to read over it and discuss some of the issues with the organization of the essay.  The consultant asked me if I wanted to run the consultation.  I was hesitant because I had not seen many consultations, but she encouraged me to conduct the consultation.  Because the ideas of each paragraph were not clearly defined, we made an outline of the points the consultant was attempting to make.  The Writing Consultant ended up taking charge, which I was happy about because I was struggling with an innovative way to incorporate a different idea for a new paragraph.  It was a good experience for me to be more involved with conducting the consultation than I was at the previous one.

Digital Story

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkNMTqWUF_I

Reflection on a Reflection

For today's class we were assigned to write a reflection for two of our blogs.  Thus far, I have written one that needs to be edited and have a paragraph and a thesis down for my second.  I am having a great deal of trouble with reflecting on the blogs which are reflections of experiences I have had.  When I am writing, I feel as though I am just restating what I have already said in my blog.  An approach that I used in my first, finished reflection was analyzing three of my own quotes.  I think the reason why I am finding this to be a difficult task is because I know exactly what I meant when I wrote it.  For my second reflection that is in progress, I have been writing how that blog in particular is different and why I was able to respond to the article in a different way.  For now, I will continue to use these approaches and see how it all turns out by 3pm this afternoon.

Analyzing a Professor's End Comments

In the article "Genre of the End Comment", Summer Smith discusses the variations in a professor's written final comments at the end of a paper.  I had never really thought that deeply into it after reading it once or twice.  This article makes me wonder whether teachers write their comments with these tactics in mind or if the way they writes comments just comes naturally.  Out of the few papers that I have written this year,  the statement that resonates with me is "in the context of the end commentt the coaching genres are so consistently paired with negative evaluations that they take on a negative association"  (15).  In my Spanish Literature class, we read narratives and then analyze them in class so that we have a foundation to write an analytical essay.  However, this is my first Spanish class outside of the General Education requirement and it is much more difficult than I expected.  The majority of my class is freshman who took AP Spanish Literature and are familiar with work that this course requires.  When I handed in my first rough draft, I had it returned with the statement "You did not understand the theme of the story. Come see me."  I agree that when a teacher accuses the student, it is very discouraging and made me feel as though my entire paper was garbage.  It would have been nice to see a positive message beforehand so that I felt more comfortable about going to see my teacher.  Also, a less blunt statement rather than "come see me" would have been more encouraging and allow me to see the professor as a "coach" figure rather than an authoritative figure.  The end comments of a professor also influence a student's comfort level within the class for the remainder of the year-- or it does for me at least.  If a teacher gives positive feedback, it indirectly says, "This is okay, but if you try a different approach I'm sure you will improve".  Once I went to see my Spanish teacher about the paper, she spoke to me in English, which was a start to being comfortable.  Although she started off with saying that she is worried about my lack of understanding, I felt more comfortable as she suggested I ask more questions in class and visit her during her office hours if I don't feel comfortable speaking in class.  I was able to establish that although I was struggling with the course, I was still very concerned about my academics.  I felt more comfortable going back to her for my next assignment because she wrote Mucho Mejor! as her comment to show that she recognized my improvements in the short time I had to edit my essay.  The article really dives into these minor words that students may take one glance at.  It was interesting to see the psychological affects and statistics about these words.

Writing Center Shadow 3

Tonight I had my first real consultation in the Writing Center.  A student came to revise her paper and discuss the organization of her paper.  She was writing about the Universal Health Care system that has been proposed by the government for one of her Leadership classes.  Although the writing style was not something that she was particularly familiar with, she had great ideas about the topic.  The Writing Consultant  read through her paper and asked questions whenever anything was unclear.  As she continued on reading the paper, she would circle common mistakes that the writing made, such as usage of contractions in a formal paper and extensive use of rhetorical questions.  The Writing Consultant did a great job of explaining the changes she made.  I also felt a part of the conversation between the Consultant and the writer.  When the consultant questioned the tense of a verb, she asked for a third opinion from me.  I also facilitated ideas about other possible words or phrases to use to make the paper more clear to the reader.  After going through the paper to clarify ideas and make them more concise, the writer said that she felt she had one of the best writing consultations.  All the changes that were made were explained to her rather than having a bunch of circles and lines all over her paper and not knowing what they meant.  The consultant encouraged the writer to write down ideas as they were discussed.  It was interesting to see how the three of us could work together so that the writer's ideas were as clear and concise to her audience as they were to her.  I suggested a word at one point that captured the intent of the writer, then commented on how I can never seem to find the right vocabulary when I write my own papers.  The consultant laugh and said how it takes a village to write a paper.  I found this to be quite true in my experience.  When I write a paper, it always seems to make sense until I review it with another person.  Another thought that crossed my mind during this consultation is the variations in writing styles from person to person.  I know that I always try to make my papers are formal as possible and use as few colloquial words as possible.  That seems to be something that will trouble me as a Writing Consultant.  The writer today used the phrase "divvy up", which I personally would not use in a paper.  It is difficult to decided when word choice and sentence style cross the line of voice and personal style.  That will be one thing that I will learn to distinguish through enough consultations.

Grammar Errors

In my experience in writing, I have the greatest trouble with run-on sentences, especially in my first drafts.  I have a tendency to include too many ideas or too many components in a single sentence.  As a result, my sentences become very cumbersome and difficult to read.  To solve this problem, I try to alternate between long and short sentences.  The page on the University of Richmond Writer's Web about run-on sentences is helpful because it explains common problems that writers have.  Another grammatical error that the book "The Grammar Hammer" mentioned as one of the top twenty most grammatical errors is using wrong prepositions.  I've noticed that in my writing I sometimes use the improper prepositions.  This happens not only in my writing for English classes, but also for my writing in my Spanish class.  It is interesting to see how my grammatical errors carry over from my English class to my Spanish class.

Writing Center Shadow 2

This week was my second week of shadowing at the Writing Center-- or at least it was supposed to be.  I arrived at 7:55, giving myself five minutes of a buffer before my time slot of 8pm to 9pm.  I walked into the room and did not see any traces of someone being there.  There was no backpack left, no papers let on the table, only a cleaned room.  Because the person I shadow has a time slot from 7pm to 9pm, I was a little confused.  I waited until 8:15 and decided to leave, since there was not consultant or consultee.  I know that in the past when I have had a Writing Center appointment I have gone to the Speech Center to consult in a quiet room to avoid the distraction of other consultations.  Since there was no one else in the room, I didn't search in the Speech Center across the hall.  I suppose the consultant called out to the main office of the Writing Center, but did not realize that I was expecting to meet with her.  Unfortunately, I have no had any experience consulting in the Writing Center.  Hopefully I will be able to have a consultation with a student for this upcoming Monday evening.

Fall Resolutions

With the mid-way point in the semester coming up next week, there are goals that I have to improve my Citizenship grade.  One thing thing I would like to do more is comment on my classmates' blogs.  Because I did not realize how to follow other blogs until about half an hour ago, I wasn't aware of what else my classmates were writing about.  Last week in class we watched YouTube digital stories that had been posted on Mara's blog.  I'm interested in seeing what else my classmates are posting on their blogs and if they can spark an idea in my mind for a blog of my own.  Another goal I have is to speak more in class.  Naturally, I become so interested in hearing what other have to say that I often become distracted from forming my own ideas.  Smaller groups are always better for me because I am more aware that my contribution is necessary and plays a larger role in the discussion.

Practicing Writing Consultations

Last night my roommate was finishing up her midterm writing assignment for her history class, The Reconstruction Era.  I offered to help her edit her final draft and practice techniques that I learned from readings about being a Writing Consultant and from my experiences in the Writing Center.  Because she had other homework to do, I read through her paper and made comments and mentally took note of positive and negative patterns.  Once I went through the paper, I went through the comments I made and explained why I made them.  Some of the comments I made concerned usage of the active voice, specifying pronouns to improve clarity, and making connections from paragraph to paragraph.  Corrections that I made most often pertained to her word choice, which I corrected using the "Track Changes" feature of Microsoft word so that she could use her discretion if the changes needed to be made.  The biggest issue I found was changes in tense from one idea to the next, which I know I used to have an issue with.  She thanked me for my help and then sent it to another friend who is a history major.  He gave he the same general advice about her changes in tense and the wordiness of some of her sentences.  It goes to show that having other eyes read a paper before it is handed to a professor allows one to improve problems that he or she may have overpassed.

Writing Center Shadow 1

Last night I had my first shadowing session at the Writing Center.  As I arrived, the employed writing consultant was finishing up with her prior appointment.  Because she did not have another appointment for the hour that I was there, we just talked about different aspects of being a Writing Consultant.  She showed me how to access and complete the reports that are sent to the professors and different phrases to use when writing the reports.  After reading articles about the tutor-professor relationship and not knowing the length or formality of a report, it was interesting to see how another consultant communicates to professors.  Although I was not able to observe a consultation, it was nice to learn more about the Writing Center from a new employee and to meet the consultant whom I will shadow over the next semester.

Reading the article Youth Culture and Digital Media: New Literacies for New Times allowed me to contemplate the value of digital stories today.  The article discusses an event in Oakland, California that showed a series of digital stories on various subjects created by youth in the area.  Although I made a digital story last year for a class, I didn't consider the value that it had for both the creator and the audience.  A digital story allows the creator to utilize their creativity by making connections with images and how they portray or enhance the message in the digital story.  The music element of a digital story allows students to use their musical talents to compose their own musical pieces.  In today recession, education boards have the tendency to limit the funding to music and art departments in schools.  However, digital stories thrive off the music and art to evoke greater emotion from audience and to captivate the audience's attention.  In addition to the audio and visual aspects, the message is what is the primary focus of the digital story.  With a limitation of time to express one's message, a student must make their message as intriguing and concise as possible.  This helps a student to improve his or her writing by cutting out the unnecessary details and to get to the core of their purpose in creating their digital story.  Digital stories are limited in their length in order to hold the audience's attention for a reasonable amount of time.  Because we are in a new age of technology, digital stories are a great way to enhance a student's message for their community because the audio, images, and tone create a more effective piece of work than an essay in black ink on a sheet of paper.


Youth Culture and Digital Media: New Literacies for New Times

Past Experiences as a Writing Center Tutee

In his essay "The Idea of a Writing Center" North exemplifies frustration with the perceived expectations of a Writing Center.  It is not a place for those who write poorly and need extra attention to be caught up to the rest of the class, but instead it is a place for writers to enhance their writing by having a companion by their side in the tedious and lonely process of writing.  North strongly adverses the idea that a Writing Center is a place for students to drop off their papers and have them proofread.  Likewise, teachers have a notion that the Writing Center is only beneficial to students with poor grammar skills.  My experiences at the Writing Center both at my high school and at the University of Richmond have been more positive than what North describes.  At the University of Richmond I have gone to the Writing Center about five or six times, visiting a different tutor each time.  Many times I hand my paper to the Writing Consultant and sit next to her as we read through my paper aloud to correct grammatical errors, once the Writing Consultant read my paper to herself as she fixed my mistakes.  But to their defense, I spent hours creating outline after outline, then rough draft after rough draft before I went into the Writing Center with my nearly completed work.  When I have gone to the Writing Center in the past, I'm guilty of just what North criticizes- the image of the Writing Center as a "fix-it" shop.  The most beneficial time I went to the Writing Center was when I believed I completed my paper and needed some finishing input before I handed my paper in the following day.  The assignment was to compare two challenging novel.  I knew that I had made a stretch for one of my points, but I figured I had made sufficient support after working on it for so many days.  Once the Writing Consultant read until my last point, she told me that she wasn't going to read any further because  either my last point was not relevant or my thesis was needed to be changed entirely.  She gave me advice about how to resolve my issue considering the essay was due in less than 24 hours.  Although I felt very frustrated and overwhelmed, I knew that had I gone to the Writing Center while I was in the process of writing- knowing that I was not comfortable with my points- I would have created a better writing piece.  In addition, I would have eliminated a great amount of the stress I felt as I scrambled to change my thesis and parts of my essay without starting from scratch if I had talked about my thesis and possible points of support with another person before I began writing. What I found the most intriguing about North's article was that he ended with the fact that the idea of a Writing Center and a place to discuss ideas has been around since Socrates first opened up a shop in the Ancient Grecian times.

Compost Heap

In class we compared the writing process to a compost heap and the more I think about it, the more similarities I can draw from the process of a compost and one's writing process.  In the beginning both are just bits and pieces, each with a purpose to something at one time, whether it is an idea about Macbeth or the peel of a banana in the midst of the other disposed items. The heat in the compost from the chemical process of the materials is like a writer's motivation to write and to generate new thoughts about the topic at hand.  In the end a final product results from both processes, both of which are used for other purposes.  Compost is used for gardens and to catalyze the growth of plants and other forms of life.  Writing pieces is used to educate others and to inspire readers to draw greater conclusions from analyzing the piece and possibly embark on the same messy cycle we call the writing process.

CMP Tutoring Session 1

Today I had my first consultation today with a high school senior from Chesterfield County.  The goal of the session was to start brainstorming for a college application essay.  Prior to our session, the students had time to freewrite after given prompts about things they care about, injustices they see in their community, and other open ended topics.  With my tutoree, we discussed the ideas that she wrote about to have her further develop her ideas through explanation.  We then went through the handouts about the different types of essay questions that colleges ask for as found on the College Board website- The "You" Question, The "Why Us" Question, and The "Creative" Question.  I further explained to her that the college admissions staff is looking for an essay that is entertaining and makes the applicant different from all the other applicants.  When we got to the question about career goals, I told her that I found that one difficult because even as a sophomore in college majoring in Business Administration, I do not know what specific career I want.  She began to tell me that she wants to be a nurse in the pediatric department.  I continued the conversation by asking her what specifically she likes about working with children and what led her to that career goal.  In her high school years she works in a Big Brother/Sister program with troubled teens, babysits in her community,  is part of a peer mentor program with her school, and plays on a co-ed soccer team at her high school.  We put those thoughts on the back burner while we talked about other ideas, like her response to Elon University's inquiry about how she sees an ethical problem in her community through race discrimination.  Returning to her thoughts about her career goals, she decided that she wanted to incorporate what other people say about her generous personality into her response.  We discussed how the programs that she is a part of exemplify her nurturing spirit and her motivation to try her hardest.  I asked her to freewrite about what we discussed, but she seemed a bit lost about what point to start.  To guide her more, I made up a prompt for her: "What are your career goals and what experiences and personal qualities have driven you to this goal?".  She wrote nonstop until the three-minute warning was announced.  As she wrote, I looked at the prompts for the Nursing and Health Sciences departments for UVa and Georgetown.  They both similarly asked about experiences that guided the applicant to their career choice.  When there were a few minutes left, we discussed the possibility of her applying to VCU and asked the director if she knew about the VCU's Nursing School application.  We discussed that the student search the VCU website for more information.  At the end of the session, the student asked me what I wrote my college application essays on.  I am glad that I can use my past experiences writing college essays to help her while becoming a better writing consultant.

Week 1/2 Blog

The rhetoric article "The Rhetorical Stance from week 1 by Wayne Booth provided what a rhetorical piece needs to make it more appealing to the audience.  I like how towards the beginning he outline that an effective work needs an argument about the topic, appealing to the audience, and a tone of voice from the author.  Throughout the article I recognized how each point affected another.  The subject of the rhetoric that provides the argument interests the audience, while the tone makes the work keeps the audience entertained.  In the article "A Kind Word for Bullshit: The Problem of Academic Writing,"  I noticed that a point the authors were making was that the facts are not false of a writing that is considered bullshit.  Instead, it is the intentions and voice that are considered bullshit.  I do not see this as a negative quality of a work because sometime writers are called to create pieces that are not necessarily their specialty.  A college student may need to tone down their lighthearted vocabulary and style of writing for a formal biology lab report.  According to this article, "bullshit does not necessarily involve a misrepresentation of facts," but instead is an alteration of the writer's voice through their creativity.  The author's voice in writing may be misrepresented from how he or she acts in person, but it is voice that allows the author to connect to the audience.  For writers, their audience is crucial to their success, as noted by the author from Booth's piece who named his book after what 90% of businessmen found to be the most interesting.  What may be considered academic bullshit to some is the cause of popularity for most writers.

"The Rhetorical Stance"
"A Kind Word for Bullshit: The Problem of Academic Writing"