Who has the power?

"At one extreme, some comments are overly 

harsh or disrespectful, and usurp control over student writing, making 

sweeping editorial changes and dictating what should be said or how it 

should be presented from top to bottom. At the other extreme, some 

teacher comments are so minimal and generic that they become detached 

and offer no help, no real response. Both extremes ought to be avoided. "

The question of control in editing a paper is definitely an interesting one. When I first read Straub's article, "The Concept of Control in a Teacher Response", I was a bit skeptical. Having been on the receiving end of many teacher responses and comments on papers, I honestly like a teacher who takes control and tells me what they want. It is probably the lazy aspect of me that doesn't want to do any more work than I have to, but maybe it's the part of me that says "I've laid it all out there, I've given it my best shot, if you don't like it you better tell me what to change". And so I expected Straub to chastise teachers who give directive comments and to promote watered down comments that don't really guide the writer anywhere, just leave them confused as to whether the teacher liked it or not. 

I was presently surprised, then, when Straub recognized the importance of a multi-faceted approach, comments that both guide but encourage, that form as a sounding board. Most importantly, Straub realizes that not every teacher is the same, not every learning situation is the same, and not every student is the same. Therefore rather than prescribe one specific type of editing he encourages for teachers to find what works for them, as long as it is not one of the extremes in the quotes above. Again, this brings me back to the personal attachment a student has to their writing. Harshly directive comments will just crush a writer's spirit, but confusingly vague questions will just frustrate. It will be interesting to see what direction my style of editing will take in the months ahead.

In the Hot Seat

When I signed up for Intro to Composition Theory/Pedagogy, I didn't really know what I was getting into. I thought we might be learning some grammar, some editing techniques, hopefully learn how to become a better writer and editor in the process but I honestly thought it would be a fairly boring, technical class. I had no idea that I would be put on the hot seat per say, that I would be placed on the other side of the desk as the person whose essay was being edited. To be honest, I had never gone to the writing center, and so this was  a new experience for me. I had edited friends' and siblings' papers before, and I had always been quite skeptical about people who are sensitive about their writing. I had always had the perspective that people should disattach themselves from their writing, allow it to be commented on and criticized, in an effort to better themselves and their essays. I had the idea that I was this way, disattached and unemotional when it came to my writing. Oh how wrong I was.

Sitting up there and having people take apart my essay, though very politely and constructively, not negatively, I realized how personal writing is. It's a creation, a child, a part of my brain and my thoughts and my fingers. And this is not something to be embarrassed about. What is important is finding that balance between cherishing your writing and being able to take critiques and mold your writing. As I have been editing my essay I have tried to take both of these sides of a writer's identity into account.

Free Write...

I'm a bit stressed with thsi class. I am learning a lot, granted, but I am overwhelmed with the sheer amount of assignments - I feel as if I might be forgetting something constantly. I feel ok about my blog posts - I have never been a blogger and so having a blog in the first place has been a great experience, being able to participate in the online forum and take part in online conversations with my classmates and with my professor. But right now I only have about 50 points, and I need 30 more by next week. I would love to spend more time on my blogs, perhaps bring in some multimedia (pictures, videos, etc), but I hope that I have time to invest into each blog post. I would hate for any of my work to resemble the bullshit that we have discussed so often in class.
As for the other projects, I'm not quite sure where I am. I need to to edit my sister's college application essay, which I plan on doing this week. I have already done my interview for the digital story, but I feel like I need to start working on the actual compilation of the story because, let's be honest, I'm absolutely horrible with technology and it will probably take me a while to get it down. I also need to do the classmate consultation project with Michael, since my essay is due October 15 and I want to get a draft in to the teacher by October 5th hopefully. I think these are all the projects, and now that I have it all written out I feel much better. The blog essay is due soon as well, but I don't really know the details on that. For these next few weeks I will need to plan my schedule carefully so that I can allot the time that each assignment deserves, and so that I can get the most from each project.

Digital Story Interview

This past week I sat down with Dr. Hicks for the interview on writing, his identity as a writer, and his view of the writing process in general.
I went into the interview with almost no idea what direction it would take. Dr. Hicks teaches my living and learning class, Leadership and the Common Good, and so I have a fairly solid relationship with him as a professor and an individual. However, I was nervous about stepping into his office, questioning him about his world view and his writing. What if I ran out of questions? What if I asked a question that rubbed him the wrong way? I went in with the purpose of not only recording his observations on writing, but with the purpose of getting to know him as a person and as an academic better. I knew that he had written and published multiple books, and was interested in knowing his motivations for writing - does he love writing as an art form in itself or does he view it simply as a tool for communication? Finally, I wanted to know his opinion on things we'd discussed in class, like the bullshit essay and the role of audience vs personal voice in writing - these were more selfish questions as someone turning in papers for him to grade, and as a student wanting to hear the perspective of the "other side".
I came away with more than just an interview for my digital story - I came away with a better understanding of the academic life of a professor, and personalizing the sometimes impersonal grades that one receives on a paper. It hit me that this project is more than learning how to use this technology or  even how to communicate with multi-media. It brings us closer with professors, who as writing consultants are our allies and our suppliers, not the distant judge that so many students view them as, even in the small liberal arts school setting.

Music and Writing

In our class discussion on the role of the writing tutor on Wednesday, I suddenly saw a connection between two areas of my life that are influential in the formation of my identity but, until then, completely separate: music and writing.
As a piano student of over 15 years and a singer since I can remember, I have gone to countless music lessons, learned countless songs, and performed countless times. When I was in high school, I began to give piano lessons now and then, adding the role of teacher to my identity as a student. In becoming a writing consultant, I see this same process happening again, yet this time in a different arena. Not that I have mastered writing - or music for that matter - both disciplines are ones that take a lifetime or more to master, skills you can constantly be improving and perfecting. Yet imparting a love for the art of writing and music to others is a tricky yet rewarding thing. The question is do you cater to the piece of music/writing or to the student himself? Do you teach someone how to write this specific paper/play this specific song, or do you teach the student how to be a better writer/musician in general? More interestingly, does addressing the writing lead to becoming a better writer, or must you focus on skill sets solely?

Griots and Storytellers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95Khdd3PskE

I have always loved stories. My grandmother is a storyteller, making up stories of fairies who lived in the foxgloves in my back yard and animal families that shared a tree. My father is a storyteller as well, and would weave tales of magic and adventure, of orphans who ran away from orphanages and princes in search of some lost totem. There were true stories thrown in there as well, such as the story of my birth, of his first date with my mother, of the adventures of his own childhood. My childhood was composed of stories, brick by brick, the line between reality and fiction rarely clear.
So when I heard about our chance to help with laying down the stories of an older generation, whether it be our professors or the elders of the Richmond community, I felt like I had come home. I feel as though so often people, especially in an academic setting, worry so much about writing that they forget the story. In my History of Africa course last semester we learned about oral histories, about the griots that stood as the libraries of the community, memorizing and cataloging story after story, stories of magic and of childbirth, of wars and of love, of everyday life and of extraordinary lives. The clip above is from a movie we watched about griots in Mali, specifically the training of a new griot. The relationship between the old and the young and the passing on of information along a channel of stories is what intrigued me the most. This is what we're doing with our professors, and what we'll be aiding at UR Downtown.
How to write a story is also intriguing to me - what voice do you take? What are you trying to illicit from the listener? All questions I look forward to finding the answers to.

Knowledge is like a...

What is knowledge? How is it produced? What is the role of the student, teacher, tutor in the production of knowledge?

All of these questions are raised in Andrea Lunsford's essay "Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center". While her essay mostly focused on the role of collaboration in a learning environment, the most striking question raised by her comments was that of the nature of knowledge and how it is produced.  Lunsford believes that knowledge, rather than being an external, unchangeable force is "mediated by or constructed through language in social use, as socially constructed, contextualized, as, in short, the product of collaboration" (48). Knowledge is not doled out like rations of food (a view purported by the Storehouse Centers) . Knowledge is not like a jewel to mined out of oneself (a view purported by Garret Centers). Rather knowledge is like a house, dreamed of by architects, constructed from external pieces, and created with multiple hands and viewpoints. This is the collaborative approach that I long to see in my classes, but unfortunately does not exist. Too many times is knowledge handed out by the teacher like blueprints, collecting dust. At the other extreme, too often knowledge is laid out on the floor of the classroom by students like pieces of wood, nails, and hammers, never synthesized into anything of worth. True collaboration brings these two together, a professor guiding and drawing out ideas and the class constructing them into something new. If this kind of collaboration can exist, then the bullshit discussed by the previous article will hopefully be made irrelevant, as the best ideas make the best houses.

"I have to go read that bullshit article..."

"For Ashe, race and HIV stand as significant threats to his view of the common good as a society built on twin and intertwining pillars of justice and morality; however, it is exactly his close relationship with these two impediments that allows him to lead by example, blazing a trail towards the common good."

- A nondescript bullshit essay by Rachel Templeton

When I read the title of the article, A Kind Word for Bullshit: The Problem of Academic Writing, my stomach dropped a little. I have always been a good student, especially in writing intensive classes, priding myself in knowing how to give each teacher exactly what he or she wants. In high school I viewed each paper as a complicated juggling game, the balls of teachers' expectations, vocabulary words I had to use, and the prototype of the "perfect five paragraph essay" rising and falling around me, my hands scrambling to keep them all spinning through the air. As is the case for many students, original or intelligent ideas and even my own voice would get lost in the cacophony of what I viewed as academia. And so I would turn out bullshit like the quote above on a fairly regular schedule, draping overly simple ideas in flowery words and covering up holes in my arguments with complicated sentence structures, creating an elaborate conjuring act solely to pull the hood over my teacher's eyes and even my own. 

And so I expected Eubanks and Schaeffer to unveil me for the fraud I am, hence my hesitation. Yet their partial acceptance of a type of bullshit as "inevitable when people are attempting to write well" gave me hope. Their separation of academic bullshit into the bullshit of professors (nonprototypical) and that of students (prototypical) seemed to be a bit unfair, however. Though many students do bullshit papers in the sense of writing on books/subjects of which they have no or very little knowledge, I would categorize most students in the first category of "earnestness...earnest tedium". So often do students, like me, hide use academic writing as a shield to hide behind, to appear intelligent, and to impress professors. This does not differ from the academics of the Modern Language Association, who employ academic writing to "enhance the reputation, or ethos, of the writer" centered around the reward system of tenures and grants. The academic environment of students is similarly constructed, not around tenures, but grades. Bullshit exists and thrives in both arenas, and as Eubanks and Schaeffer adeptly argue, is a necessary staple of both arenas as well.