Topics Tuesday: Eureka!

First order of business: I did not eat a taco today. This is the first Tuesday since the beginning of the semester when I have not eaten a taco. I just wasn't in the mood, and sometimes you have to listen to your (forthcoming) heart (disease) with these decisions.

BUT luckily my food choices don't change that it's still Tuesday... which means it's Topics Tuesday. Get pumped.

Today I have a selection from Spilling the Beans, our staff folklore anthology. Basically, Spilling the Beans is this gem of a book where we collect past and present consultants' thoughts about conferencing, the Writing Center, and writing in general.

I am hopeful that Flunk Day is tomorrow -- a greatly-anticipated surprise day on Coe's campus when all classes are cancelled. In wishful thinking, I am including an excerpt from the section "Eureka! Discovery, Inspiration, and Elation" (how I will feel when I am hopefully woken up by excited college students).

Robin Swale, Spring 2001:

"'Every interaction we have with people changes the reaction we'll have to the next interaction.'

Hmmm, Thought provoking, isn't it? And, the reality is that in its simplistic portrayal, it's so true. Each time we conference, we learn something new. We learn more about communication. We realize more about how our peers work. We gain teaching expertise, and perhaps a little more insight on exactly how important a clearly stated, provable thesis is. Every time a person walks in to the writing center, each time we lead them to the tables in the hallway, we learn something from them as they learn from, and bounce ideas off of, us. And then we take what we learn from them and use it in our next interaction.

Example. When I started our here last year, I had absolutely no clue what I was doing. I remember sitting and feeling overwhelmed when my first conference was not only an upperclassman, but an upperclassman that also worked in the WC. I didn't know anything about revising except for grammar changes, sentence structure, and the dumb reader technique. But I learned. With each and every conference I sat down to, I thought of (or borrowed from other consultants) different ways to approach papers. I realized today as I walked back into the writing center after a conference just how much I have learned through the year and a half I have been here, and just how many different skills I have obtained. I am no longer afraid to ask questions, no longer afraid of those hour and a half brainstorming sessions. My conferences have developed from the five-minute slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am variety to the hour long discussions about organization, thought process, thesis statements, and anything else that the writer wishes to bring up. I am not saying that I am the perfect consultant. By all means, no. I am just saying that I've learned, and that the realization of that fact is amazing.

It's true--'every interaction we have with other people changes the reaciton we'll have to the next interaction.'"

Conferencing itself is full of Eureka moments, but sometimes the moments come long after. Talking to others about writing is a skill, and its development often happens when we're not realizing it. Here at the CWC, we keep on keeping on because practice is key.

All my best,

Angela

Topics Tuesday: Are More Choices Better?

Hello one and all.

Today we're not having Topics Tuesday.

 ...April Fool's! I know, such a good joke. OF COURSE we're having Topics Tuesday, where I write about all things Topics in Composition, our writing center staff development course.

This week, my group worked on our research project. That might not be the most thrilling thing for you to read about at this point (though it will be when we are done)! Instead, I want to direct you to a poignant TEDTalk by Barry Schwartz called "The Paradox of Choice."


I remember watching this video last fall in Topics. I still think about it often, especially in relation to conferences.

In short, Schwartz talks about how more options is not always better. Sometimes, having too many choices paralyzes us.

I think this concept can be true for writing as well. A writer has endless possibilities for the content, organization, and style of the paper. Starting a paper can be incredibly daunting.

When I conference, I try to help the writer focus on a few choices at a time. I ask the writer to think hypothetically about what the paper would look like if they chose to take one particular direction. Thinking about one option at a time can help the writer move forward, even if he later decides on a different path.

-Angela

Driver's License? Wrong Side of Road.

Hello. It's Tuesday, which in Spanish is martes. Just for your general knowledge.

Tuesday also means TOPICS TUESDAY, this fantastic time where I get to express excitement about tacos (served in the Coe College cafeteria) and about Topics in Composition, our staff development course.

In our staff meeting last night, one of the groups from the Tybee Island topics group did a workshop for the entire center. (You can read more about our Tybee trip here). This workshop centered around conciseness -- making a million thoughts into a few words.

I'll admit, I've always had a bit of a hard time with brevity. I like my words and thoughts to flow together, and I often would rather risk over-explaining myself than being unclear. I learned through this workshop, as Dr. Bob said, that the first draft is for the writer and the final draft for the reader. The first draft is my time to make everything sound good and flow well; the final draft is what gets the point across in the most interesting, concise way possible.

The workshop leaders had us condense an embarrassing moment into six words. Mine? "Driver's License? Wrong Side of Road."

Yes, it was beyond embarrassing.

After the exercise, our staff discussed the advantages and disadvantages of brevity. An advantage of my own 6-word anecdote is its universality. Most adults know how nerve-wracking taking a driver's license test can be, and most will infer the details of my story while implicitly understanding why it is embarrassing. On the other hand, leaving out these details changes the essence of the story. The reader does not know that I never had an accident before or since or that the old man sitting next to me was being really mean. The reader can infer details, but that doesn't necessarily mean she will get the details right.

We agreed that it is important to strike a balance between conciseness and detail -- that's one of many reasons we revise.

If you want to let us know your own thoughts about brevity while practicing brevity, tweet at @CoeWC! We would love to hear from you.

-Angela

Topics Tuesday: Consultants over Time

It's a Tuesday. AKA the best day of the week. Monday is over, the week is gaining momentum, the cafeteria is serving tacos, and I get to write another post detailing the top-secret happenings of our Topics in Composition staff development course.

This week is especially top secret. I'm going to give you the low-down on my group's research project. That's right. The writing center does research, and I'm going to tell you about it. Brag to your friends; you know you want to.

Basically, the spring semester of Topics is structured around studying special little forms we fill out after conferences to see if any conclusions can be drawn. We focus mostly on qualitative research, meaning we generally care more about finding patterns in what the consultant says in the form rather than how she responds to check-box style constructs.

My group wants to look at how consultants' commentaries and scores on these forms change over time, specifically from the first year to the fourth year. We predict that consultants will use more confident language over time, but that the self-evaluative scores will not necessarily change. We think the language of the commentaries will change because the consultant should theoretically gain confidence in his conferencing style as he gains experience. Even if a conference does not go stunningly well (though we all know CWC staff is pretty darn close to perfect), he does not have to base his stalk as a consultant in that single conference. We don't think scores will change because as a consultant gains experience, she also gains knowledge of what she can do better and what she has done better in the past. The scale is relative based on the consultant using it. A really good conference might seem totally different in the first year than in the fourth year.

Of course, these are all just speculations. Our group is now working on the logistics to test these predictions. There will be more updates as our group has them!

Remember, you only get one Tuesday per week! Use it to its fullest Tuesday potential!

-Angela

Topics Tuesday: Power Posing

Hello, one and all, and welcome to the last Tuesday before Spring Break!

Every college student is feeling the pressure to hit the gym and achieve that perfect Spring Break body. At last night's staff meeting, CWC consultants learned how to do just that.

Or, at least, the perfect body language.

Alright, let me explain. In the interest of staff development, Dr. Bob let us watch Amy Cuddy's 20-minute TED talk entitled, "Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are." Since the point of Topics in Composition class (which, if you just started reading our blog, is the subject of this weekly feature) is staff development, I thought it would be good to talk about the video in this post.

If you have 20 minutes, I would highly encourage you to watch the full video. If not, I will give a brief summary. Cuddy, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, discusses the poses we unintentionally perform every day that denote power or denote lack of power. We can often tell who the Alpha Leaders in the room are by how they position their bodies -- spread out, taking lots of space, maybe with arms or legs outstretched. Similarly, we can tell who is feeling uncomfortable -- hunched up, legs crossed, and looking down. Experimental evidence has found that people who perform the low-power poses are less likely to receive a job after a strenuous interview.

Remarkably, Cuddy suggests the pose affects the performance, rather than the performance affecting the pose. We feel more powerful when we look more powerful, and that, in turn, allows us to perform better. Doing a high-power pose for just 2 minutes before a stressful situation (like a job interview) can, according to Cuddy, increase testosterone levels (a power hormone) and decrease cortisol levels (a stress hormone), making us better equipped to perform to the best of our abilities.

What does this mean for CWC consultants? It means that to perform to the best of our abilities, we should monitor our body language. When we are unsure of what to do next in a conference, we should stretch out and make ourselves comfortable. It also means we can gauge our student writers better. We have a visual representation of how confident they are feeling and we can work on increasing confidence if we notice a low-power pose. One way to do this might be as simple as asking the student to stretch.

Hitting the gym won't be necessary -- let's do some power poses instead.

All of Tuesday's best,
Angela

Topics Tuesday: Not Just the Words

Hello friends of the Coe Writing Center! We're back for another delightful week of Topics Tuesday. At 11:30 PM. Quite frankly, that's how we roll. (Night owls are welcome here.)

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
concentrate only on the words on the paper."

-Claire Rasmussen

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