This week in our staff development course Topics in Composition (hence the name of this weekly feature), my small group focused on revising mission statements. You will get to see the polished version of that mission statement at some ambiguous time in the future.
For now, I would like to direct your attention to a lovely, nuanced "mission statement" of sorts I found in Spilling the Beans, our staff guidebook of sorts.
"The secret of the CWC Writing Miracle: we don’t-Claire Rasmussen
concentrate only on the words on the paper."
It's around midterms time at Coe, and students are feeling the pressure of, well, life. Since even academic writing can feel very personal, really good papers can be crushed by the weight of anxiety and made into a pile of mushed stress.
Can you hear the Indiana Jones theme song playing yet? This is when the Coe Writing Center consultant comes in to save the day... or at least, to help the student save their own day.
The words on the paper don't always matter in a conference. Often, the look on a student's face or the tone of voice when she says, "Yeah, it's an ok paper... I guess," tells me a lot more about what that student needs. Sometimes, my role is just to listen to whatever the student needs to let out before she feels ready to write: lots of homework, break-ups, a bad grade, a missed episode of Supernatural, etc.
A paper cannot come into existence without a writer -- it seems obvious, but this concept is often overlooked. As a consultant, I concentrate on whatever that writer might need in that particular moment, and trust that the words will work themselves out... at least until she comes back for a revision conference.
With Tuesday cheer,
Angela
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