CWC around the world, part ii (?)

Portland, England - 2007.

But I've yet to set off the fire alarm!

I keep shocking myself on couches and doorknobs (and Andy, when he's around). Hello, dry Iowan weather. I loves me some static electricity. (The last statement was a lie. I'm sorry.)

I thought I'd write up a list of How Not to Burn Down the Writing Center, possibly based upon personal experience.

1. Do not microwave your socks for three minutes in an attempt to dry them out after a walk in the rain.
2. Clean out the oven before you use it - turns out that food residue left from the previous use starts to smoke when you're innocently trying to make a loaf of bread. Who knew?
   
3. Set the oven to Convection - not to Bake. It prevents the tops of your brownies or muffins from becoming something like charcoal biscuits while the middles remain stubbornly gooey.
4. Don't leave a pot of coffee on a burner and forget about it so it boils dry and the pot cracks/explodes.
5. Um. Don't be a moron, basically.
   

Fortunately, you're all smart, savvy individuals who won't make these same mistakes! And remember, as always, to remain vigilant against nuclear weapons.

- Leta

nothing much to say

Hello, greater audience of the Coe Writing Center blog. I have been amazingly remiss in updating ... Apologies, deepest and heartfelt.

Upcoming CWC-related (however tangentially) events:
- The Ladies Literary Club contest.
- The James P. Young Essay Prize contest.
- Paul Engle Creative Writing Prize contest.

There will be more information on these events (currently I'm without the poster detailing these things ... I'm just all kinds of unprepared today) forthcoming.

Also: congratulations, Jenna, on a thesis well-defended!

- Leta

Glitter

Here's my Las Vegas reflection - sorry that it's so late in posting. Also, sorry for my extreme lack of posting for the past couple ... wow, for the past couple months. What happened? Anyway, here it is.

Las Vegas is not a city I would visit under normal circumstances. It’s not because it’s what my parents would probably call “a den of sin” – I just don’t find it all that appealing. Gambling isn’t that exciting, scantily clad ladies aren’t my thing, and neon lights give me headaches. But a trip paid for by the college and including a lot of my friends – sure. Why not.

The conference itself …. Bob mentioned a while back how it always surprises him how bad a lot of the presentations are. I am, too. I mean, I’ve been to great sessions – but I’ve been to some pretty awful ones, too.

Being constantly told how great the CWC is was simultaneously frustrating and elating. It’s nice to have that ego boost, and it’s nice to see all the areas we’re doing well, but it also makes it that much harder to see where we need to improve. I mean, our presentations tend to be fairly well done, but it’s not like we spend a whole lot of time polishing them. I think the reason our presentations go so well is that each consultant is saturated on CWC philosophy, each of us has a pretty sophisticated intuition for how the writing center is supposed to run. That knowledge lets us connect the topic of our presentations to CWC practices as a whole – we’re able to pull in that larger picture. And that’s a good thing – that, I think, is what puts us out there on the leading edge.

But it’s easy to forget that we’re a long way from perfect.

The first session I went to was about writing centers in secondary education. There were two presenters: the first was a woman who started a WC in her inner city, charter school. It’s staffed by high school students, who get elective credit for working. It’s after school, and they train at the woman’s alma mater (St. John’s) with the college’s writing center consultants. The high school WC tells the teachers to encourage, but not require, that students come to the WC. The point is to make it a resource, not a punishment.

The second presenter was a “peer tutor” (that title has always bothered me) who decided to establish a WC in the local high school as a project. The WC is still in its fledgling stages; this presentation was probably given too early. It was staffed by college students volunteering their time, and was used by ten students total in the one semester it had been open. This was one of those presentations that would have been much better had the project been given more time to mature. As it was, it turned into more of a What Not to Do speech rather than a discussion of the benefits and difficulties of opening a writing center in a high school.

I went to a panel discussion composed of directors of WCs from around the world. This was probably the most disappointing of the sessions I attended. It had so much potential to be an engaging, interesting, lively session! But it turned out to be fairly dry. It was structured so each director had a few minutes to talk about their writing center. Instead of an open forum and discussion, it was a series of brief, stilted speeches. There was some interesting points brought up, though. Each WC tailored itself to fit in with the home university. Writing Centers are peculiar and almost completely unique to America – I learned that 99% of all European writing centers are founded by an American. It was also strange to learn that, in most countries, writing is undervalued – it’s considered a solitary activity; reading is important, but writing is not. There’s a lot of apathy toward writing. This was really weird to me – if you can value reading, then it would follow necessarily to value writing, wouldn’t it? The art of creating worthwhile things to read? But I guess that’s a connection that only seems natural to Americans.

The most interesting session I attended was on Thursday. It was focused on racism in the Writing Center. The upshot of the session was that racism occurs everywhere, and the writing center should actively and vocally set itself as anti-racist. “I hear people say, ‘We don’t have problems with racism in our writing center,’” someone said (and I am paraphrasing a little, here), “but that is so wrong. Even if it’s not talked about, it’s there, and it needs to be pointed out and actively fought.”

I was thinking about the CWC. And I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen race become an issue; not in terms of conferencing anyway. Apparently at the school that was leading the discussion, there had been cases of students refusing to conference with a consultant due to the consultant’s race. I don’t think that’s ever happened here. It is uncomfortable to note the lack of diversity in the CWC. But it’s difficult to be a beacon of diversity in a school that also has a very low minority-student percentage. I think the CWC probably accurately reflects Coe’s student population.

I don’t know. I have issues with making a writing center a political entity. I’m not okay with making it partisan for any cause, no matter how correct or noble. There was another phrase thrown around during the session – “if you’re not against racism you’re for it”– but I think it’s weird to attribute some grand cause to a writing center other than writing and reading. It’s a writing center, not a social justice center. I think it’s the duty of all intellectual people to dedicate themselves, personally, to causes of social justice, but I don’t think that writing centers should be major advocates for (or opponents of) them as an organization.

Then there was a session on conferencing creative writing. It was half presentation and half workshop – we looked at examples of actual creative writing drafts and talked about how we as consultants can help with creative pursuits. The solution the presenting group came up with was to have a working knowledge of the basics of good creative writing. It was difficult for me to think about this, because I’m experienced in workshopping creative writing. I know what to look for. But what I found interesting about this presentation is that there was never once a mention about the consultant acting as a sounding board for ideas. No one mentioned brainstorming. The whole discussion was very logical, very systematic. Writers were classified into three categories – students who write on their own but don’t have experience sharing their work (are often defensive and get lost with technical terms), students in intro creative writing courses with minimal experience (are insecure, interpret criticism as personal attack, but understand and use literary jargon), and students with a lot of experience workshopping their pieces (are often intimidating to tutors who have less experience). Some ideas for handling creative writing conferences were to ask a lot of questions – to just ask about the story itself. We’re all readers in writing centers. It’s good to just be curious. Sometimes you don’t have to be an expert – you just have to be someone who’s interested.

One of the things I dislike about these conferences is the theoretical, detached discussion about “students” and “tutors” and “we” and “they”; it all becomes so divorced from actual practice, from the messiness and nuances of reality. The sessions I attended had less of that than I’ve experienced at past conferences. But it was still frustrating to see how far into theory people get. Theory only works when you can connect it back to people and put it into practice. It’s no good if you work out a perfect system that nonetheless fails to take real life into account.

So, I don’t know. It wasn’t a bad conference, besides the conflict between the hotel’s definition of “breakfast” and mine. Maybe I wasn’t paying close enough attention, but I didn’t run across any gems of wisdom or innovation that I wanted to rush home to implement. The problems a lot of sessions were dealing with were things that the CWC doesn’t see as problems, or doesn’t even have. For example, we don’t have to worry about lying to a student about being a teacher or TA and not just a peer tutor (this is the topic of one of the posters I studied), because we only have undergrad consultants. I don’t know. I was just distracted by all the Vegas glitter. We’ll go with that.

- Leta

mecca

New thing I've been doing which is agreeable:
Eating lunch from Brewed Awakenings (usually soup - the soup is great) in the Writing Center.

And, yeah, that was a really, shamefully shameless plug.


I've been spending less and less time in the Writing Center. My freshman year, if I wasn't eating, sleeping, or in class, I was here. But since then, I find myself only frequenting Peterson 145 when I work, or need a conference, or have to pull an all-nighter to write a paper I've put off for too long.

But I've been making an effort to be here more often, outside of my working hours. And I'm remembering why I spent so much time here in the first place.

On almost every bit of Writing Center propaganda we produce, there's the phrase coined by WC alum Laura Farmer -- "The Writing Center: the Mecca of random conversations." I've become immune to this statement - it's just something to say to pique interest, a good space filler. But I've been reminded, lately, of how true this statement is. People discuss everything here. I'd give examples, but they probably wouldn't reflect how bizarre and varied the truth actually is.

So I think I'm going to continue this upward trend. I'd forgotten that, when I'm away, I miss being here. It's good remembering.

FD Reeve is the bomb

F.D. Reeve, on dealing with problems by being a poet:
"I have to write. If you can solve your problems by drinking, do."
Reeve came to the Writing Center and gave a brief lecture this last Thursday. He also read some of his poems. The guy was down to earth. Refreshingly so - he didn't wax sentimental or poetic about being a poet. He didn't strike me as someone who was just literary, with no foot in the real world.
He has a sense of humor, he listened, was easy to talk to. You didn't feel like he was lording anything over you. There wasn't a trace of condescension when he talked, no pretense of knowing the great secrets of writing. He wasn't trendy.
His advice on overcoming writer's block was to drink, and if that didn't work, to translate something into English from another language. Weird. Fantastic.

- Leta

a coffee making reminder

          When using the fancy new red grinder, make sure you hold the cup all the way up on it, so the grounds don't go flying all over.
          Also, when the sound of the grinder changes, getting higher pitched, hit the stop switch; it's not that great for it to run without anything to chew on.
          Before you dump the grounds into a filter, hold the cup under where the grinds come out and whack the dangling plate really hard -- I'm serious, ball up your fist and wail on that thing! Some of the more finely ground beans get caught up in the blades and gum up the machine, which is no good. So vent some frustrations on it! It's therapeutic.

  - Leta

fine dining

So the first "Dining with the Director" event was pretty fantastic.
          I wasn't sure what to expect from this outing - discussion of Writing Center theories and practices? Or maybe brainstorming ways to make the Writing Center better?
          What actually transpired was this:
          Dr Bob and his wife showed up at the Writing Center in their space-age minivan (the doors open at the touch of a button! Okay, so not really that new or exciting ...) and Jenna, Ezra, Johanna, Chris, and myself piled in. We drove to Aladdin Restaurant and ordered an assortment of appetizers.
          As we ate off of comically small plates (the saucers that came with Jenna and Johanna's tea were larger), we really did just sit and talk. About nothing in particular, really (Ezra: "It makes you alert!" - regarding coffee in the morning). It felt more like a meal between friends, rather than a business meeting. It was just ... satisfying, and fun. It was good to get off campus with fellow consultants and Dr Bob.
          I don't mean to get all warm and fuzzy here, but it was neat to sit there and see how the past few years have brought us together. We've had so many shared experiences, most of them through the Writing Center.
          I'm not sure if this evening went exactly as Dr Bob had planned, but I'm gonna call it a success.

And to echo Jenna's earlier post: spots are still open for breakfast at the Butterfly Cafe on Thursday morning - the sign up sheet is posted on Dr Bob's door. What are you waiting for?

  - Leta