How to end a session: What should I do?

Sessions end as if by magic. I see the clock, wrap up concluding thoughts or ideas, and review the contents of the session. Usually I am dipping into the next appointment by a few minutes and eventually by the end of the day I am about 20 minutes over to allow everyone the full hour.

I am relieved that we have shortened consultations to only 40 minutes. If we need more time to work with a client we can, but at the same time if we do not, we have less time of discharge in each session. To elaborate, I think of myself like a battery. I only have so much juice for each session. If I run an hour, I am pretty drained, but if I only do 30-40 minutes, I still have some energy left. I recharge at the beginning of every session but as with most rechargeable batteries, the more often they discharge all the way, the less effective they become over time (even if batteries really don’t do that, you get the point).

Now that we know that I am excited about implementing a 40 minute session, I have no idea how to enforce a 40 minute session. While sitting here in front of the computer, I feel the urge to generate a list of possible solutions to ending a session:

Spend more time at the beginning explaining how a session will proceed

Ask what things the client would prefer to work on specifically (encourage them to fill out the first question in the session log)

At around 30 minutes, begin to discuss the overall impact of the paper, areas that need more work (research, thesis, etc…) and deliver any praise or compliments (about particular sentence, ability to recognize errors during session, new idea, etc…).

Just state, “Time’s Up!” nicely and ask client if they have any specific questions about what was covered in the session.

Well, I guess I knew how to do these things all along, but I don’t know that they are in my mind until I write them out. Most of these ideas are standard procedure for ending a session of any time length, but I never verbalized them and made sense of them. And because I wrote them out, I thought it would be nice to share with my peers in case you were asking the same question.

Playing into the Resistant Client...A Story

I had the pleasure of working with a doctoral student on her paper she was submitting for publication. I was ready to please and impress this professional student that I too had a good understanding of a topic: writing and revision. Upon reading the first paragraph I understood the writer did not consider an audience for her paper. Well, maybe she did think of an audience, other professionals in her field, but still, as a reader, I was left at the end of the paragraph with no more understanding of her paper than when I started. I wanted to address her lack acknowledgment of an audience by not continuing on to the next paragraph and looking at her slightly puzzled (no need to generate frustration immediately). I told her I was going to summarize her first paragraph to see if what I read was what she wanted to convey to her readers. Well, my summary did not coincide with her beliefs about what she wrote and my little summary technique actually led her to believe that I was not competent enough to understand what she was writing about. She lost all faith in my ability to help her and so when I tried to offer other suggestions later on in the appointment, she would explain the topic or idea again in a way that I would hopefully understand, but never attempted to realize that she needed to write what she was saying to me. Granted, the topic was not overly complex or foreign but because I am not a student in that field of study, I was not qualified to generate ideas about what I thought she was talking about. Long story short, sometimes you enter a session with the best intentions and you want to assist others (especially when they are formally trained in a subject you are not) in a way that is subtle yet effective. I wanted to collaborate with the student on her paper but I instead let myself be played as the student who would be taught by the master. The next time this happens, I will stop the session and explain that while I have not been formally trained in the subject, I am a seasoned consultant and I do have some tricks up my sleeve to help writers of all abilities to improve their skills. The most important lesson from this story: do not let a client make you feel that you are not as helpful as you know you are!

A Sanitary, Swine Flu-free Writing Center

With both bosses down for the count, I feel the flu-ridden walls closing in. As tutors, we are already the first ones to catch the flu or the common cold; we must interact with several students every day in extremely close quarters. Wonderful. Better yet, some of our clients want us to touch their filthy laptops, which have more germs on them than the common toilet seat. This year, 90% of flu cases are expected to be of the swine variety. Once someone is sick with the virus, they can be incapacitated from 7 to 10 days. So what's a busy tutor to do? First of all, if you think you are sick, wear a surgical mask, or better yet, stay home. The Japanese are on to something there. For the rest of us, it is a good idea to obsessively use hand sanitizer, and refrain from touching your face AT ALL TIMES. Also, always remember to cough and sneeze into your elbow. Seriously. Do it. Otherwise, I'll be quite cross with you. Merry flu season tidings, Ashley T.

The Cite Right Program

Obviously plagiarism is a big deal, especially at the University level. However many students, whether through lack of preparation or through lack of knowledge of documentation requirements, plagiarize often unintentionally. The Cite Right Program is a way for us to help students understand how to avoid stealing someone else's words, and instead use others' ideas, documenting appropriately, to compliment their own. I've worked with a couple of students and therefore, Sherry has asked me to share a little bit about what I've done with those of you who might not be sure how to approach this task of helping a student to have a good understanding of plagiarism so that he or she does not plagiarize again. The way I approached my first student worked well. Although, there are always improvements to be made. He brought in the paper that contained plagiarism. First, we looked at that paper to see where he went wrong. We discussed the importance of documentation, and about how using a source is supposed to support your paper. We didn't try to rewrite that particular paper because the paper was not to be resubmitted. Next, we used the resources Sherry provided to better comprehend the difference between plagiarism and non-plagiarism. I told him as we used the resources to ask me about any questions he had. When he had a question, we would talk about it until he surely understood that specific concept. After completing the quizzes and other resources, we still had time, which I thought we could spend productively. Because he claimed that lack of preparation was the main reason for his plagiarism, I asked the student to bring in a book that he would be reading for a future class and together we thought of a possible thesis for a possible future paper. Also, I was able to help him understand the correct way to approach a paper. He read the book, developed a thesis, and began to research articles and books written by critics. We worked on using their ideas to support his own, and we practiced correctly documenting those sources. This approach worked for that particular student. Of course, every student is different. And as we have different types of students, we can share our experiences with each other. This is how we will continue to learn and continue to improve our new program.

Affect/Effect- What's the big difference?

In the past week, out of maybe ten appointments, I had at least four clients question their usage of the words "effect" and "affect." Somewhere in the back of my brain, was an answer to their confusion. I simply told them, "In most cases, an effect is affected." I tried to tell them that usually effect is a noun (as in the cause and the effect) and affect is a verb (meaning to have an influence). Coincidentally, I was watching a new television show Tuesday night called "Fringe" and I heard a character use affect as a noun. I started to think that everything I had been saying was totally wrong. So, I waited for a commercial (the show is really intense) and I searched through the dictionary, but came up unsatisfied as to what the difference really is between affect and effect. Then, I went to the computer (consequently missing part of the show) and I searched google by typing, "the difference between..." You know how google finishes the phrase for you. Well, the first phrase said, "the difference between men and women" with 12,000,000 results. Shockingly, the second phrase listed was "the difference between affect and effect" with 52,100,00 results. Apparently, I thought as I chuckled, more people are interested in using words correctly in a sentence than getting to know the opposite sex. That seems like a good thing to me, being that I am a future English teacher. But the more I think about my sociology background, I realize that the reason there are so many more results for affect vs. effect is because of two reasons: 1) grammar is more objective and 2) we, as a people, think we know everything there is to know about each other. Wait, I'm getting off topic... The point I wanted to make is that the first couple of search results were enough to make me feel better about myself. I realized that what I had been telling clients was partly true. But when I found the sight linked to this, I had an even deeper understanding. The site offers a concise, yet very clear answer to the confusion that over 52 million different sites want to clear up. Both affect and effect can be a verb, just as they can both be a noun. And though I missed the ending of that great show, I realized that the character who used affect as a noun was a psychologist (psychology apparently being the main field that would use affect as a noun). Therefore, I was correct in saying that affect was mainly a verb, meaning to "influence or change." However, effect can be used as a verb as well, meaning "to make it happen." Mainly, effect is the noun we would use, meaning "result" (www.askoxford.com). The site linked to this blog and mentioned above offers this same explanation and a couple examples for deeper understanding. I just thought, because this issue comes up so frequently, it might be worth blogging about. Without checking, I am guessing that the 52 million results will more or less all say the same thing.

Resistant Tutees... with a twist

This morning, while driving to campus in my usual state of rage and impatience, and I began to reflect on my tutoring experiences (random, I know). Being already unhappy because I was in the car driving through Oakland County (worst place to drive, I swear), I began thinking of difficult tutoring sessions. I found that usually, when students resist, there are ways to get them to "give in" or in some cases, just try as hard as possible to get them help, whether they want it or not. But, and this hasn't happened in a while, there are times when it's not merely a matter of getting the student to "give in" but also saving the face of the Writing Center itself. Gasp! Whatever could I mean? Well it has to do with tutoring styles. I found that sometimes the hardest students to work with are those who have worked with previous tutors at the Writing Center and expect me to work the exact same way as the previous tutor did. When I politely refuse and attempt to handle the session how I usually do, the student sometimes begins to resist me and my tutoring style. I know that we are supposed to be flexible, depending on the student, but in this situation, it is hard to give in. Mostly, this happened to me last summer. Students would come in and expect me to take complete control of their paper, writing on it and reading it. Sometimes, and we've all had this happen, they would use the Internet, text, or, and this only happened once, try to get up and go do something else while I "checked" their paper. So, while each tutor handles each session differently, I think the real issue here is saving the face of the Writing Center. A situation like this may cause the student to not return, or even tell others that the Writing Center is not "worth it." Students may see us as inconsistent in our help, which is something we are trying to remedy through great sessions like Genevieve's APA session a few weeks ago. But I wonder, is there anything we can do to keep students from feeling this way, in this regard? I know that many of us took the RHT320 (is it still RHT?), but we all still work in different ways. One idea that might work is to have more sessions from individual tutors, on tutoring styles. I think that each of our styles is unique and that no one style is wrong, but instead if we had individual sessions, maybe with lunch again (hint hint), then we can learn new tips, brush up on our own methods, and continue to improve the Writing Center so that we have less instances of students feeling that the Writing Center is inconsistent with it's help.

Thank You for the APA tips

When I attended the APA presentation put on by Genevieve, I was not sure how much information I would retain, if any at all. But, I just wanted to let everyone know that it did pay off. In obtaining my degrees, like many others, I was mostly required to use MLA for research. The first time I worked with a student that was required to use APA, I looked for the handbook and ended up asking Genevieve for assistance, because I knew she was more familiar with it than I was. However, after attending Genevieve's presentation, the next time a student came in with an APA paper, I was not overwhelmed whatsoever. I realized that I had learned some key points. For example, I remembered that the year comes right after the author's name, which is so different than what I'm used to with MLA. Also, I am more confident looking things up in the handbook we have, having been so familiarized by the presentation. Therefore, I am offering thanks to all who had a part in the workshop. Thank you.