Yuliana Baez

This has been a very rewarding semester. Being a first time Writing Colleague was definitely an experience. I am happy that I was placed in a good class with students that I was really able to connect to and know. I have learned a lot but I know that there is a whole lot more to be learned and every placement is a different experience.

So now for my blog post for this week I want to reach out to the older writing colleagues and ask you what you experience was like when you were placed in a first year seminar was like? Was it easy or hard? What were some of the challenges you had?—Any advice?

I am a bit nervous about what is about to come because some first year seminars tend to be big. The placement that I am currently in is very structured which makes me also nervous that some of the students won’t want to come to the meetings.

Also for the newer Writing Colleagues like me—do you guys have any concerns for what is to come?

The Next Step

It’s about that time when everybody is making plans for their summer – internships, research, vacation for some – and for the seniors in the group, we’re planning out what we’re going to do with the rest of our lives.

Fortunately our decisions won’t actually determine where our lives will ultimately end up, but they’ll certainly orient us in a particular direction.  This post and its responses will deviate from the typical format; it will be informal, will have less problem solving, and will mostly be us sharing our plans for summer/the short term future.  Who has landed a research position?  An internship? Who is taking the summer off?  Etc.

As I’m sure is the case with many seniors, I’ll be graduating in a few weeks and I have yet to figure out what I’ll be doing.  I do know that it will have something to do with statistics and research (a far cry from writing, but my major is Econ) but I don’t know how long it will take for me to find a job in that arena.  I’ve applied to several openings and am simply waiting for the responses.  I hope to land a job doing statistics for a company engaged in some interesting research, some research that will benefit people rather than just the company I do it for.

So I’ll do that for a few years before (hopefully) heading off to grad school for Econ or Stats.

What are you all doing?

How many of you are looking to do something in writing?  For a brief period of time I thought I wanted to pursue a writing career, but then I realized that I may be taking something I really enjoy and ruining it by making it my day job.  I ultimately decided that I much more enjoy writing as a secondary endeavor, as a hobby.  Specifically I enjoy writing short-stories, which I send off to various internet publishers, and hope that they’ll feature me as their short fiction story of the day.  I have yet to succeed in this, but I took a creative writing course this semester and I hope my next round of submissions will have a few pieces make it past an editor’s trash bin.  So anyway, I decided about a year ago that I didn’t want to do writing, and have since returned to Econ as a career path.  My Writing and Rhetoric studies aren’t wasted though – it’s handy to be able to treat writing more as a craft or as something methodical than as an act of spontaneous word generation where you’re left with whatever you haphazardly pecked out on the keyboard.  Every time I’m writing a cover letter or emailing for a job, I’m thankful to have studied writing in the way that we can at HWS.

So to make the responses a bit structured, answer with 1) Your year and major, 2) your intended career path, and 3) your summer plans (whether or not they fit your career plans).  And of course if you want to include something else, then please do.

-Scott

Are They Getting It?

As this semester has rolled by and students are busy with big projects, tests, and essays, a certain sense of stress and worry has fallen upon me. Yes, I am finding piles upon piles of work filling my assignment notebook and end of the year ceremonies, meetings, and seminars to attend. However, I am most concerned with my own students in the “Writer’s Seminar”, an introductory course to the basics and fundamental of college writing.

I am obligated to meet with the students every week as they build upon the four projects that make up the entirety of their end of the year portfolio. The projects vary from creative writing to videos to summaries to history papers. Many students have not reacted positively to some of these assignments, which has made it hard for me to explain the benefit of the coursework and relate how a Writing Colleague, through the use of facilitative questioning, can reinforce the conceptual ideas in class that are supposed to be reflected in the diverse set of projects. This may have been the down fall from the beginning of the semester.

For this reason, much like Bonnie, I go over the same assignments with students about three to four times, hoping they continue to be prepared with new progress and insight into their writing assignments. But, as most portfolio-based classes go, some of the students-mostly freshman aside from the one sophomore- have come to me with fewer and fewer questions. For example: Student one approaches the table. Student one sits down. Student one whips out his or her paper. Student one slaps it on the table in front of me. Student one asks, “What should I work on?”

This situation, in exaggeration, is the reoccurring reality I have encountered. I feel I have put in a lot of effort, sending out emails on writing tips every other week, weekly reminders of meetings, and setting up office hours so students can come and meet with me if they need further help brainstorming, outlining, forming a thesis, or other such elements of the basic essay. I have been flexible and I have been pushy; I allow them to reschedule in hopes they will meet me and give them suggestions and using facilitative questioning when necessary to push the student, even though I was told I should merely be directing them to such guides as “The Every Day Writer” and pushing the initiative on them.

I feel my own experience taking the same class my freshman year has been insightful and has given me a much easier time helping them, and I do feel like to some extent I am reaching some of these students through which they have thanked me and taken away with them certain ideas and strategies to write better, to formulate a thesis, and applying their understanding to such aspects of writing like unity, coherency, transition, fluidity, and summarization.

However, there are a  number of students who don’t show up for many meetings or are careless in preparation.  They tell me they wish they didn’t meet with me every week and that they are confident in their writing abilities. They even shrug me off or don’t care to meet with me. This hurts, as I feel like I have failed. I struggle with leaving behind the personal connections with students and realizing that I cannot reach out and help students with their writing if they do not want to work with me on their writing. I am worried that I am not reaching some of the students or am not being helpful because they give me little in return.

When I brought this up with the professor, he reassured that he thought I had done an excellent job and patted me on the back, explaining his acknowledgement of the involvement I have endured in the placement. However the professor told me again, like he did in the beginning of the semester, “You can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” I took this into consideration, recognizing the sad fact that I can’t do anything more than sit down in the café and be willing, engaging, and helpful. I just want that reinforcement that I am making a difference, I am making progress. However, it doesn’t feel that way as of late.

I just hope that they are aware of the opportunity to pursuer their writing with me and understand their identity as a writer; their own strengths and weaknesses and the basic formality of college writing from this class and the weekly meetings with me. Hopefully they do not think it was a waste of time, considering how much we meet.

I just hope they are getting it.

Does anyone else feel this way? If so, have you talked to the professor or gotten feedback from students? Has anyone found any alternate strategies to reaching out to students who may not enjoy nor care to engage in the meetings?

More Productive Meetings

This semester I have been placed in an Africana Studies class called “Black Earth” which focuses on how African American literature portrays the environment.  I have never taken a course like this before and I have really enjoyed reading the novels with the class and discussing all of the different essay prompts they are given.  While I have really enjoyed the class, it has been an interesting placement because half the students in the class are Freshmen who have not declared their majors yet and the other half are Juniors and Seniors, most of whom are Environmental Studies majors.  While I have not had many problems with the Freshmen not coming to their meetings, there are several Juniors and Seniors who do not come to their meetings regularly (some I have seen just once or twice the whole semester).  Even though each missed meeting counts as an absence in the class, many of the upperclassmen still do not come to their meetings.  I am wondering if any of you have been in this position before and how you have handled it.  Do any of you work with students who are older than you?  Do you stop waiting for students after they do not show up several weeks in row?    Do you try to contact them or just focus on the students who do show up to their meetings?

In addition, I meet with the students in this class once a week and sometimes our meetings can be two or three weeks before the next essay is due.  While the professor does create a detailed calendar for what each student should bring to their meetings every week, I have found that unless it is the week before the essay is due, most students come with nothing to do.  We often discuss the books we have read and think about how they might want to answer the essay prompt, but it becomes difficult to do this every week when we read the same book for several weeks.  I am wondering how everyone else handles meetings when students do not bring any of their writing or questions to ask.  Do you have any activities or exercises that might help to make my meetings more productive in these instances?

Getting the most of my placement

This semester’s placement has been far different than my previous two. The reason for this is probably because this is not a first year seminar, where the students feel like missing a meeting with us is the end of the world, and therefore always show up. In a class with upperclassmen and over 30 students total, it is difficult to get to know each student and his or her writing style, especially when they do not feel obligated to attend meetings. While I miss this familiarity with students, I have taken a different approach for this particular class. I will be there for students who want the help, as is our job as writing colleagues, but I am also getting the most out of my education. While I have maintained the fundamental view of being a writing colleague instead of a student in the placement, I transitioned a little bit to enhance my education as well. This is, in fact, a rare opportunity to be able to learn material for a class without actually being graded by that professor. I have found this to be sort of a relief. I not only read the class texts to be prepared for the meetings with students, but also for my own education and sometimes enjoyment. By taking on this perspective, I have actually found myself to be more helpful and productive during meetings because it is much easier to talk about a book you actually wanted to read. While I had not planned on ever enrolling in an African Studies class, this placement has given me a chance to do so in a way. I am thus gaining an experience I never would have thought to do on my own. Especially since the last essay for the students is based on three fiction novels, I am thrilled to discuss it with students. I have never been too fond of reading for school because we never had the choice, but by embracing each reading with an open mind, I have begun to enjoy the class more, and therefore, able to assist students with their writing in a more friendly, less academic fashion. This mentality has been well received, for the students that do want to discuss the class texts for writing assignments have been much more responsive to facilitative questioning. I never thought I would be at the stage where I read class texts because of my own desire to educate myself, but now that I am, it has made this placement, along with other classes, more enjoyable. Do any of you feel this way about required reading for your placement?

“Will you Proofread this?” (Jocelyn Rapp)

The answer is no.
Ok, but seriously, the answer is yes.

I have had lost of stumbling blocks in my placement in Environmental Justice with Joel Helfrich, but the thing I struggle with most now is actually high demand and long meetings. Like many other placements, the class requires only 3 papers and they have only one or two drafts due. However, Joel is extremely picky about grammar and style. I can’t blame the man, but it has made my job difficult.

His assignments are not typical, so many students meet me before getting started at all, just to talk about what to do, where to start, will a topic work, where to find information etc. Then we meet again to talk about content and if the essay they have written answers all the parts of the prompt. Finally, we’ll meet to make sure it all comes together and to work out all those grammatical bugs (contractions, comma splices, pronoun issues, ambiguities…the list goes on and on).

What I’m getting at is that I know I don’t have to do this. I know that I could set a limit of one or two meetings a paper. Or that I could leave them on their own for proofreading. The problem is, since I know what the teacher is looking for, I can’t help but stay and work out all those kinks with students: to make sure they have reworded there “this,” “these,” “you” and “we” phrases; to make sure that final paragraph does the work it is supposed to and fits the tone of the paper.

I want to know what other people do when they look at their colleagues papers and see comma splices and ambiguities. Do you really just pass them by? Focus on other things? If you don’t, how long are your meetings? Do you go sentence by sentence? Paragraph by paragraph? Have you given up on not writing on their papers? I know I have.

It is especially important to me now because I have established expectations with my colleagues that I will not knowingly allow them to turn in grammatically flawed papers. Is it enough to require them to be there and edit with me? Or should I draw the line and say, from now on, you’re on your own?

Making the most of meetings

In “Foundations of Africana Studies” there are only three papers throughout the whole semester, and each one has only one draft due. It is a fairly large class, but I may not even meet with every student in the class, and the ones I do will only have three or so sessions throughout the whole semester. Not that I don’t feel I have been helpful in my one set of meetings so far, but I am worried that I am not doing all that I can, or at least that the number of times I meet with each student, and the distance between those meetings means that I won’t get to know each students writing in as in-depth of a way as I should. I worry that this will lead to my meetings being too general, or too similar throughout, that because of the lack of meetings I won’t be as helpful as I can be. One thing I had talked about in a meeting with Alex was not only going over the new paper being written in future meetings, but re-looking at each previously graded paper in the meetings, thus gaining increased perspective about the progress, style, strengths, and weaknesses of each student I work with. I was wondering if anyone had suggestions on how I can make the small number of meetings I have with each individual more meaningful, how I can pack as much help as I can into a small package of meetings.