Final Shadow Visit

Since I completely forgot to go to my last shadowing appointment tonight before break, I decided to read over and respond to Emily's blog, since we both shadow the same consultant. What I gathered from her visit was that not everyone that attends the writing center has major problems within their paper, and sometimes the only errors that need to be fixed are grammar and word choice. I found Emily’s experience similar to the “Strong paper” video we watched off of the writing center site. In this video however, the writing consultant reads over the paper and tells the student that her paper does not need any revision because it is "A" material. However, when the student does not receive the “A” grade, she is very upset that the consultant told her that her paper was better than it actually was.

I think that this example proves that we can never be too comfortable with our writing and that there is always something that can be improved or added. As long as we keep challenging ourselves when we write, we will be able to think of more creative and concise ways to express meaning and thought. I would have been interested in this visit tonight because previously all of my visits to the writing center have been with student’s who need a lot of help on their papers. However, I think it is also important that a consultant knows how to work with a student who has a strong paper and who maybe only needs a few grammatical and word choice changes. Knowing how to work with students who have strong papers will be an important skill that our class will need to master before our next mentoring session.

As we heard from Silvia this Wednesday, the students will have revised and thoroughly worked on their paper since the last time we saw them. We must be prepared for this improvement and must also not be intimidated by it, because as we have learned, there are always ways in which we can improve our writing! We would be doing the students a disservice if we told them that their paper did not need any more revision.

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