I’m a little disappointed. Yesterday, I had three great Writing Center appointments. My first one was an OWL (so, I guess not an appointment), which I really enjoyed.
My third one was with my thesis student, which went pretty well.
But it’s my second one that I want to focus on. A Writing 121 student came in with a paper on abortion. We read through it, I praised it (not to make this seem mechanical, but I want to cut to the point), and then we went over some problems. He had two theses, so we discussed which one he wanted to argue. We then looked at how he could prevent some counterpoints. We even spent a long time discussing his definition of human life so that he could logically defend this paper. We discussed how to handle counterpoints, especially in regards to the Bible, without offending religious readers (he had picked up on the word “thing” in one of the Gospels and decided that since an Angel or God used the word “thing” when referring to the Holy Spirit in Mary’s womb, that that meant God thought the fetus of Jesus was just a thing. A little too simplified, perhaps?). It was a good philosophical discussion, and we even went over citations and doing them properly.
So, then yesterday afternoon, I ran into his teacher. Before saying anything else, he said, “Great assessment of my student’s paper. The two theses problem and everything.” And we chatted a bit, he told me the student went straight from the Writing Center appointment to him to turn in the paper, and didn’t incorporate a word that we talked about!
This is frustrating! So, what good is the Writing Center if students aren’t going to even use what we talk about? I know most students probably incorporate something that they’ve learned from the Writing Center, especially students who aren’t required to go and so go on their own will. What really bugs me is that this student’s teacher told me that he gave the student an extension to go to the Writing Center. He got an extension and didn’t even bother with anything we talked about.
What a waste of time. I guess it’s not, because at least I got a good philosophical discussion of what human life is out of it. And because maybe, just maybe, the student will understand what we talked about and use it in future writing. Who knows. But anyway, I’m frustrated.
this strikes me as an amazing–and I hope unusual–writing center experience. The student certainly didn’t act like all he wanted was a blue slip: from your description he sounded engaged.
I can see how you’d be frustrated, but as you say you did have a good discussion, and it seems clear to me that you made a good use of your time. That’s really all you can control.
Also: maybe the student was skeptical that coming to the writing center could help him, so he didn’t leave time to revise. Your conference sounds helpful, so perhaps you will have changed his attitude toward the center–definitely a good thing.
Great points, Lisa. Maybe he will come back and sees the value in the WC now.
Michael,
The last institution that I worked at (Washington State University) was so wary of this frustration that they didn’t give faculty any information regarding student use of the Center. Indeed, faculty were discouraged from making writing center visits part of any assignment.
Now that I’ve worked for a unit that has a different philosophy, I can see the value of both models. Although I agree with Lisa that the student’s engaged attitude suggests that he may have learned about the future value of discussing his writing with a writing assistant, I think that this is one of the side effects of the compulsory WC visit.
I agree with Lisa, however, that you probably changed his mind about many things in your time together.
Dennis