Category: Academic Writing

The Places We Write: An Unfinished List

Ashly Bender, Assistant Director

Ashly_Version_3Last week, BookRiot—one of my favorite blogs for literary discussions—posted about the places people read: under a tree, at the beach, in a coffee shop, you know the places. For each place, author Jonathan Streeter rated the aesthetic appeal. For example, reading under a tree is highly aesthetic given its “classic appeal” and prominence in paintings, books, and other forms of art. (Reading “on the throne” was least aesthetic, for obvious reasons.)

Streeter’s blog post got me thinking about the places we write. Much like reading, the cultural conventions around writers and how to write are strong. For centuries, the idea of the writer conjured up images of solitary, often disagreeable, and socially inept individuals (arguably, usually men). Even now, these characteristics often persist. We see it in movies like Shakespeare in Love, where the inspired William Shakespeare runs to his small cluttered apartment to scribble down lines of his upcoming play, or in Stranger than Fiction, where Emma Thompson’s character is portrayed as difficult to get along with. On-screen or in-book writers who frequent coffee shops are just as likely to be seen as solitary. Bronwyn Williams and Amy Zenger offer more critical and thorough insight on this in their book Popular Culture and Representations of Literacy.

Given that this view of writers persists, despite repeated evidence that when we write our content most often comes from interactions with other texts and other people, I want to consider today the places we actually write.

Dorm/Home: Most people who are expecting to be doing consistent writing or studying have a space in their home to work. For many students that place probably their desk in their dorm room. Others who aren’t living in dorms might have an office in their house, or just a desk. Personally, most of the writing I do at home I do in my kitchen because my table is big enough to spread out any books or notes I want to look at while I write. Plus, the food is right there.

Cafes and Bookstores: It makes sense to begin here since I’m currently sitting in a Barnes and Noble Café. While plenty of the other customers are reading, there are at least three other people writing in some form, and based on observation over time, I’d say this is not unusual. I generally prefer coffee shops, but the town I’m in is small and doesn’t have a café that accommodates hours-long customers. The upside to coffee and book shops is that those of us who need to “get out of the house” are able to be productive while still seemingly engaging with the outside world. Plus, there’s always people watching or small talk if you get stuck or need a break.

Libraries: Libraries have always had a particular atmosphere for me: quiet, studious, quiet. You may be getting a sense of why I prefer the coffee shop, but many people love the sense of focus and the lack of distraction that libraries can offer. Plus, many students living on-campus can make temporary homes and offices in the libraries at their universities. In fact, the University of Louisville’s Ekstrom Library is currently renovating to offer more of these spaces. The benefit of being in library, of course, is that if you need to look up a book or an article, you’re already there! I love wandering through the stacks. And, Ekstrom Library also houses the University Writing Center, so if you have any writing questions or want to walk-in for an appointment you don’t have to go to another building—just to the 3rd floor.

Writing Centers: Speaking of the Writing Center… Of course, most of our work is helping students with their writing in consulting appointments, but we also have computers and tables where people can just come in and write. This was one of the important benefits of our Dissertation Writing Retreat, every morning participants had at least four hours to just write before meeting with a consultant.

This list is certainly preliminary and subject to my own experiences. Where else do you write? Where is your favorite place to write? I’ve been known to write on my porch, on an airplane, and even in my car—though not while driving! If you aren’t bound by place, what things do you need to write? Let us know in the comments!

“Good Writing” Policy: An Exploration of What It Means to “Get” Writing

Ben Bogart, Consultant

I’ve noticed a disheartening battle cry rippling through the Writing Center this summer, and it’s one that I worry might be chanted out in the world beyond our doors:  “I’m not very good at writing.”  Sometimes it’s translated as, “I’m not very good at English,” or the even more frustrated, “I just don’t get writing.”  It’s always offered with a smile, and maybe some nervous eyes fluttering around the room, as though the speaker has just confessed something shocking or controversial (I would expect the same body language from someone offering up, “I’m not really good at using my turn signal,” or “I don’t really like your Mom”).  And every time I cringe a bit.  But it’s not because of what the person has said so much as it is the feeling of defeat that they’re trying so hard to convey.  There seems to be a lot behind a statement like, “I’m not very good at writing,” and I’d like to take this opportunity to explore what I hear when each time that statement is uttered.

Bogart PictureYou just don’t get writing.  Okay, I suppose I understand.  There are a lot of things I don’t get—things like cooking and mathematics and computer programming and football.  We all have our natural talents, and if you’ve had enough life experience to warrant the claim that you simply don’t get writing, I’m guessing that it’s because you do get something else—something likely just as important.  People who tell me that they don’t get writing are usually quick to offer examples of past failures to prove to me that they really don’t get it, and so I know a fair amount of these statements are backed by solid evidence.  But more so than with any other talent that one may or may not “get,” what I generally hear when someone tells me that they don’t do well with writing is an echo of someone else telling them that they don’t do well with it.  And that bothers me.

Let me try to explain.  If you don’t have wild success in the cooking/baking world, you’re likely to know on your own:  you bake a cake, and it comes out flat and tasting of baking soda, and as you slide it forlornly into the trash you mutter to yourself, “I just don’t get baking.”  Fair enough.  That cake wasn’t your masterpiece, and if anybody wants to claim that you do get baking, you can just have them dig out a sample from the trash can and see for themselves.  Consider the opposite end of the spectrum:  you bake a cake and it’s just delicious.  You couldn’t stop licking the spoon you used to mix the batter, you had pictures up on Facebook before you’d even set the timer, and now that it’s done, you’re thinking that you might just eat the whole thing yourself.  A friend comes over and tries it, and spits it out immediately.  “Maybe you just don’t get baking,” she offers with a smile, hoping to lighten the blow.  Do you buy it?  I’m guessing (and really hoping) that the answer is, “no.”  You tasted that cake.  You fell in love with it before it was even fully done.  You know cake, and that cake, sir or m’am, that cake was good cake.  If you’re like my Aunt Sharon, you continue making that cake forever, trotting it out at birthday parties and anniversaries and holidays, and while everyone else politely folds your cake into their napkins when you’re not looking, you know deep down that that cake is pretty good cake.

And yet if we play this same scenario out with writing—particularly with scholarly writing—I don’t know that the same confidence generally plays out.  You write a paper that you love (couldn’t stop licking the spoon, posting pictures on Facebook, etc.), turn it in to a professor, and it comes back with a letter grade lower than you expected and some kind of plus/minus code that conveys to you nothing except that you “don’t get writing.”  This is where even Aunt Sharon, I believe, would falter.  She might still have confidence in the cake, but that paper that just came back to her has convinced her that she really doesn’t know what she’s doing when she tries to put words together on paper.  While she will certainly continue to bake with pride (and, ironically, to write about it on Facebook), she’s somehow been shut down as far as the writing goes.  And that’s not fair.

Before we go on, I’ll certainly admit the analogy isn’t quite perfect.  The cake respondent was just a casual friend, where the paper respondent was a professional.  Sure, you caught me.  The teacher that responded to the writing didn’t actually say Aunt Sharon didn’t “get” writing; only implied it.  Yeah, okay.  To further your point, I’ll confess that I don’t even have an aunt named Sharon.  But at a very basic level, I believe the comparison works to illuminate for us a couple of important thoughts about writing.

1.)     Most of us have more experience subjectively evaluating cake than writing.  It’s a simple fact.  There’s less at stake with a cake (this sounds like the beginning to a Wallace Stevens poem) than there might be with writing—it either tastes good or it doesn’t.  We learn very easily how to distinguish between the two.  But how do we distinguish between good writing and bad writing?  What is bad writing, even?  Anyone who’s ever been forced to read Shakespeare in high school and then try to explain why it’s so great to the teacher understands very well that taste in baking (though surely complex in its own right) is a bit easier to grasp than taste in writing.

2.)    Writing seems to be connected to our identity as people in a way that baking just isn’t.  If you bake a bad cake, you might just be impatient or distracted.  Maybe you spent more time licking the spoon than you did actually mixing the stuff.  You made a bad cake, and at the absolute worst, you have to go buy a cake from the grocery store and feel a temporary sense of failure.  But when you write a bad paper?  Well, you might as well look forward to a future of digging ditches or occupying various institutional buildings.  At best, you just don’t get writing.  At worst, you’re stupid, deficient, incapable—all words meant to designate that you don’t belong.  That’s pretty heavy for someone who just wanted to tell you about the themes they picked up in The Great Gatsby.  If we treated cakes in this way, a trip to the bakery would be the most nerve-wracking experience of one’s week.

3.)    Writing fulfills a multitude of purposes, and thus has a multitude of forms, in a way that cakes just can’t match.  I mean, I guess there are wedding cakes and birthday cakes.  You could have devil’s food or angel’s food or carrot cake or any of the other varieties that exist out there.  DQ has ice cream cake, and I’ve heard that in certain places you can even get “naughty cakes,” but at a very basic level, cake is cake, right?  The varied occasions that you can associate cake with are all very different, but usually the cake is fairly similar—just modified in color or flavoring or . . . well, shape.  But writing is way more varied than that.  There’s writing that tries to inspire, writing that tries to argue a point, writing that attempts to get people to laugh, writing that is requested by others, writing that hopes to free and entrap . . . the list goes on.  The occasions are certainly different as well:  there’s writing that is meant to be shared with close friends, writing that is meant to be shared with colleagues, writing that is directed at complete strangers, and every group in between.  And what’s important is that these forms are so wildly different that one can be quite good in one area, (say, poetry), and still have no clue what they’re doing when it comes to another (say, legal documents).  So if you get disparaging comments on your Shakespeare report, does that mean that your Facebook post from the previous night is also worthless?  No.  It really doesn’t.  What it means is simply that you have more experience reading and responding to Facebook than Shakespeare, and I believe that’s okay.

4.)    Professional opinions in writing, as in baking, are still purely subjective.  Bottom line: they’re all opinions.  As in, “Well, that’s like, your opinion, man.”  If a teacher tells you that your paper was crap, the odds are that there’s another teacher within that same area code that would disagree.  Moreover, maybe that teacher had just made the exact same comments on 15 papers before yours, and so when it got written on yours, it came out a little less than friendly.  Subjectivity, by definition, can be colored by all kinds of stimuli that you just can’t predict.  So in the same way that you should doubt the opinion of someone who just got dumped and decided to tell you your cake was bad, you should question the opinion of someone who tells you your writing is not that hot.  That person likely didn’t mean to label you for the rest of time.

I could go on and on about my great cake analogy, but I’ve probably made my case here.  The point is that, when you tell me that you’re “not very good at writing,” or that you “just don’t get English,” I’m hearing you say that you’re accepting the evaluation of someone who told you that.  They were probably older than you, and they probably said it in a really convincing way, and you just took it and decided to share it with me in the middle of the Writing Center.  And I hate that.  Because you’re not bad at writing, and even if you don’t happen to “get” it, it’s not like that’s a brand that needs to be burned into your forehead.

We all write, and increasingly because of the new media outlets that are out there (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Myspace, to say nothing of text messages), we write a lot.  It’s a tool that we use to communicate our thoughts, and we generally do it without much trouble.  It’s when we load writing up with all of our insecurities and past evaluations and uncertain expectations (commonly known as “writing for the academy”) that all of a sudden we start second-guessing ourselves and falling back on those old proclamations made by people who likely didn’t intend for them to become self-fulfilling prophecies.  And that’s too bad, because just like someone telling you that your cake was bad should be a thought that is easily swept away and forgotten, so too should someone telling you that you wrote a bad paper.

For all my Shakespeare and Gatsby references, it should be clear that I think this happens a lot in high school.  I’m sure it happens at the university as well.  I want to make it just as clear that I don’t think it’s any high school teacher’s intention to do that.  Maybe you had a grumpy teacher.  Or, more likely, maybe you just had a teacher you thought was grumpy, and whose comments you read as a personal attack.  Consider all those cake advisors:  feel free to save all those things they told you about oxford commas and pronouns; certainly save the uplifting and generous comments they gave you.  But please, just forget the sharp criticisms.  I hate to break this talk of naughty cakes and fictional aunts for some sappy cliché, but please keep in mind that you are the only one that can hold yourself back in life.  If you let yourself believe that your writing is bad, it may be that old, second-period English teacher whose voice you hear, but it’s you that has clung to it.

I’m declaring now, with absolutely no power to do so, that the Writing Center is only for good writers—that is, people who have the confidence to admit to themselves that they are good writers in some genre or are willing to work to be good writers.  If you’re feeling frustrated that you can’t get your thoughts out on paper in the way you planned, rest comfortably knowing that this is a feeling all “good writers” have.  I can point you to famous authors that are studied in upper-level literature courses who have felt the same way you did.  The only difference might be that they didn’t listen to those people who discouraged their ability, and you did.  You didn’t do so hot on that term paper?  Well, think about the song lyrics you wrote that one time that made you feel accomplished.  Or that report on your cat that you did in second grade—the one that got a smiley face sticker on it.  Or that Facebook post that blew up with 27 responses from your friends in just an hour.  And then try again.

What you probably mean when you say, “I’m not very good at writing” is, “I’m not comfortable with academic writing yet.”  That’s completely fine.  Your friendly neighborhood Writing Center consultant is here to help.  It takes practice, and we’ll work through it together.  It took us a long time to “get it” too.  But don’t say that you aren’t very good at writing.  Because we only take good writers here now.

Timely Tips for the Personal Statement/Application Essay

MichelleThings are pretty slow around the Writing Center this time of year, but we have had plenty of recent or soon-to-be graduates working on personal statements or applications for graduate school.
To be honest, writing a personal statement or similar application material can be a little awkward, especially when there isn’t a specific prompt beyond “Tell us about yourself and why you want to pursue a career in this field.” It can be unnatural for some people to talk about themselves in the self-appraising manner of this genre of writing. The openness of the requirements—combined with the necessity of “selling yourself” as an applicant to a committee of people you’ve never met—leaves many clients in the Writing Center unsure of whether they’ve written something unique and compelling or ordinary and boring.
Below is some of the most common advice I have given to clients lately:
1. Prove it. Don’t just say you want to be a doctor because you love to help people (or whatever your motivation is). Give the application committee some evidence to believe that. For example, show the committee that you’ve already been trying to help people, as evidence that you’ll continue to be motivated to do that in the future. What has caused you to want to help people, how have you been doing that already, and why do you want to continue helping in the future?
Also, you can move from recounting your resume of past activities to talking about the specifics of your plan for the future. For example, I recently had a client applying to dental school who described a program he plans to implement in his own dental practice one day. Maybe you haven’t thought quite that far ahead, but you should still be able to prove to your committee that you have thought about how your motivations will play out in future action.
2. Connect experiences/activities you’ve done to who you are as an applicant. I often have clients who include compelling personal stories separated from a seemingly disconnected list of qualifications. They start off telling about growing up in poverty and how it has motivated them to be social workers for the disadvantaged, but then spend several paragraphs listing off every organization or job they participated in during college.
However, who you are and the things you have done shouldn’t be divorced from each other in your personal statement. If you’re going to include a significant job experience or volunteer opportunity in your personal statement, make sure to connect it back to how it has contributed to the person you are that’s applying to the program you want to be a part of. If the relevance seems flimsy, perhaps that activity is better fit for your resume or CV than your personal statement. Stick to activities that are more than qualifications; you want to use activities/experiences that fit in with the larger story you’re telling about who you are and why you want to be a lawyer, doctor, professor, social worker etc.
3. Watch transitions between paragraphs. Sometimes clients have a good handle on selecting and connecting experiences that have contributed to the people and professionals they are and are becoming. Instead, what seems disconnected in their writing is the relationship between those experiences. These personal statements jump from one internship, volunteer activity, or life experience to the next without demonstrating to the reader how those activities come together as a whole. Often that’s because it can be hard to reflect on the connections between seemingly discrete life events; however, working to create transitions between paragraphs are essential for helping the reader understand a cohesive picture of the message of your personal statement.
Purdue’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) offers lots of help with transitioning between paragraphs at the following link: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/574/1/. But sometimes, the most effective method of working on transitions is to discuss it with someone else who can help you identify and verbalize the connections between your paragraphs.
4. Find someone in your field who can read over your personal statement for you. We can give you lots of tips and things to think about here in the Writing Center, but it also helps to find a professional in your desired field who has already been admitted to and completed law school, dental school, etc. They’ve already been through the application process successfully and are often more in tune with the writing conventions of their field than other people. Also, they’re often happy to help potential future colleagues.
There are many web pages that offer other advice for personal statements or statements of purpose that often go along with graduate school applications. Here are a few helpful resources:

Doing More than Microwaving Alphabet Soup: Tips for Getting Better at Cooking and Writing

Ashly Bender, Assistant Director

On one now infamous afternoon many years ago, I decided to make cupcakes from box of cake mix. Following the directions on the box, I dutifully mixed the ingredients on the box: egg, oil, water. Everything was thoroughly blended, but I knew something wasn’t quite right. I looked at the cupcake papers in the pan and looked at the mix, then the papers again, then the mix. I was pretty sure the mix was too liquid-y for the papers. I checked the box again; everything on the box was in the bowl.

Still unsure, I called my best friend who regularly baked. She reasonably asked if I had followed the directions on the box. As I picked it up to read the directions to her, I realized the problem—as you, dear reader, likely already have. The cake mix itself was still in the box. I was too embarrassed to even explain what happened to my friend. I just told her I had figured it out and got off the phone.

Ashly_Version_3That’s just the most re-told story of my kitchen fails. Few remember the many, many nights I messed up Hamburger Helper. Or the time I scalded a pot when I set hot chocolate mix on fire. But since those days, I’ve learned a few things and can successfully finish both edible and enjoyable meals. I credit a lot of my growth in the kitchen to being a little more relaxed about precisely following directions, trusting my intuition a little bit more, and being ok with taking risks. It may seem odd to have such a food-themed post on a blog about writing, but my approach to cooking is somewhat influenced by my approach to writing—a skill with which I have considerably more facility and comfort.

Following directions was the first hurdle I had to conquer in the kitchen. It was the source of many of kitchen fails I mentioned above. I was so concerned with doing exactly what I was supposed to do that I would get things mixed up. I wasn’t considering the finished product. A lot of times, this is what happens when writers focus more on grammar or mechanics than the message they are trying to send. Worrying about the writing instructions governing the placement of commas, of which there may be too many to count, can keep you from finishing your sentence, your paragraph, your whole piece. Or, as was the case in my early cooking adventures, you can end up putting in too much of something, too little, or putting it in the wrong place. This is not to say that writing “instructions” like punctuation or grammar aren’t important, but they should act as guides and finishing touches rather than the main focus of piece. After all, you want to eat (or read) the finished product, not the individual ingredients.

Another important part of cooking and writing is trusting your intuition. Ever been half way through cooking a meal only to realize that you’re missing one or two ingredients? Maybe you’re better at this whole cooking thing than I have been (and sometimes still am). At times like these, you might just have to wing it and make an educated guess about what to substitute or leave out. Those small tweaks help make what you’re making your own special version—the makings of secret recipes. It’s not much different in writing, but the tweaking is more in regard to style than flavor. Writing style, sometimes it’s called voice, is often lauded as the extra bit that makes a piece unique. Often movies or other popular media suggest that this aspect of writing is some kind of gift good writers are born with. Really though, developing voice and style is largely about trying out new spices and flavors in your writing until you find the one and the amount that works. This means, after you’ve got the big pieces of the message together, pay attention to the details—add a little bit of this or that until it balances to be just right.

Whether you’re anxious about cooking or writing, relaxing the attention on producing exactly what the instructions or the instructors call for can be the first step in actually developing your style. That means taking risks, but without those risks it’s nearly impossible to get better at something. Sure, you might include too much of one ingredient and your reader or eater might object. Next time you can include less, or you can try something else. And remember, those rules that seem so strict are really just guidelines to help you make your version of piece you’re aiming for.

Uncommon Resume Tips, Or How to Get that Extra Edge

Meagan Ray, Consultant296447_10150311659961933_2008970366_n

Hey friends, it’s time we talked about resumes. With summer approaching (and it truly is approaching, regardless of how much more work one has before getting there), it’s a natural time to start working now on a resume for summer jobs or internships with a later date, or to begin applying for fall positions. It can be a daunting task, but here are some tips I’ve picked up along the way that aren’t necessarily given as conventional advice. This isn’t a comprehensive list of tips; they’re some of the things I’ve noted aren’t usually included on the resume checklists I’ve found.

  • Spell out all your acronyms. Your reader will know that the “KY” or “IN” in your address means Kentucky or Indiana, but it’s always more professional to spell it out. That goes for the “Street” in your “St.” or the “University of Louisville” in your “UofL.”
  • Offer a projected graduation date if you’re still in school in your “education” section. Even if things are up in the air, it lets your future employers know where you stand and when you could potentially go full-time.
  • Unless your grade point average (GPA) is above a 3.0, leave it off your resume, unless your potential employer notes otherwise.
  • Giving your contact information is a good time to evaluate what your e-mail address says about you. Using a school e-mail is a safe bet because there’s not much of an opportunity for miscommunication. What sounds like personality can actually sound unprofessional to an employer, so keep the gonnagitcrunk@website.com or cutebubblyandsingle@website.com between friends, not employers.
  • You can note both your permanent address and current address if your housing fluctuates with the school year.
  • If you’re turning in a resume by hand, print it on resume paper, if possible. It’s more expensive than “regular” paper because it’s weightier, but it’s a simple step that can let potential employers know immediately how you’re willing to go out of your way to be professional. Or at least out of your way to get special paper. A whole box can be an investment, so if you’re only applying a few places, ask if you can buy it by the sheet at the office supplies store.
  • When noting how long you’ve worked at a location in your “job history,” note the month instead of the semester. Looking back on my old resume, I felt silly noting that I’d been a Resident Assistant (RA) in “Fall 2011-Spring 2012,” because not every employer is knowledgeable about the semester schedule and not every school’s semesters are identical. At my alma matter, our finals week was mid-May, whereas here, it’s the end of April. If applying to a job with someone familiar with Louisville’s scheduling, they wouldn’t be aware that I’d worked several weeks longer. It sounds silly, but there’s no room for error when noting months instead.
  • Another faux pas from my past resume (it haunts me even now) is how I assumed readers would know what certain activities meant. In listing extra-curriculars which may be unfamiliar to a reader, you may wish to note what kind of organization it is in parenthesis. For example, my campus’ theatre group was called the “Players.” Listing that I was a “Player” for several semesters doesn’t automatically translate to someone outside of my college’s circle. In editing my own resume, I’ve written “Players (theatre club)” in order to clarify.
  • Lastly, know your audience and know thyself. It’s unnecessary to tailor your resume to each opportunity, but knowing what kind of audience you have will alter your focus. For instance, when I applied to graduate school, I spent more time noting my involvement at my undergraduate institution, but when I apply for summer jobs, I plan to highlight my employment history rather than being a “Player.”

One of the hardest things to do as I update my resume is to hit the delete key, which is why this is the easiest advice to dispense. Know what is important in presenting yourself and what’s too old to keep. I was super involved as a high schooler, but is this necessary information for an employer considering how long I’ve been out of high school? It would be if I were a younger student, but at this point, it’s time to delete the 4-H awards I received when I was fifteen. I’ve got a theory that this is more difficult for younger students in my generation who have often been pushed to be involved in extra-curriculars in hopes of filling a resume long before one’s work history fills it, so deleting any line feels like deleting all the work spent earning that line. Editing my own resume has been hard, but I want employers to know the best me, who works in the Writing Center as a Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA), rather than the me who was in a club for one semester freshman year. (Sorry dear reader, it’s also the time of year for rambling about myself rather than writing papers).

Good luck!

Time Away: One Key to Productivity

Brit Mandelo, Consultant

BritThough a variety of factors can contribute to low productivity, burn-out—minor or major—is the source of woe for many, many writers who are juggling high stress levels, large required outputs of work, and tight deadlines. I’m not talking procrastination; that’s a whole different animal. What I mean, here, is the sensation of doom and desperation, accompanied by a deep exhaustion, that can follow on the heels of a hard run of productivity. You just feel wrung out, but there’s still more to be done. Ignore the deadline for a bit, though. While it may sound counterintuitive, one of the solutions that can help is taking time away from the project in question: for ten minutes or for a day, a break offers a chance to recuperate.

Giving the brain a chance to rest is no different than giving the body a chance to rest. If you were doing a strenuous physical activity, you’d likely take a breather before moving on to the next challenge. The same principal can work to stave off burn-out, at least temporarily—long enough to rally and finish that research paper, possibly. The idea is to count in that break time as part of the process; don’t worry about the deadline while taking a break, or your stress level isn’t likely to decrease much at all.

Instead, if the half-finished sentence staring you down is giving you a headache, step away. Take a short walk, do the dishes, listen to music, go outside—whatever fits your fancy. An activity that isn’t mentally challenging offers extra breathing room, though sometimes a pleasant brain-stimulation, like a favorite movie or album, can be refreshing as well. Washing dishes or picking up around the house are a few of my preferred necessary distractions. (That way, the break also feels a little productive, too.) Don’t think about the project that’s driving you up a wall. If an idea happens, delightful. If not, don’t worry about it. Take the time to breathe, to loosen up, to let go of some of that doom.

When you return to the page after the break, it might not be easy, but it also might not be harrowing and awful.

Academically Speaking

Mandi Strickland, Consultant

“Can you say that…more academically?” I hear myself asking a student and pointing to a specific passage. She is writing an analytical essay, and there is a shift in the tone of her writing. She has slipped from the learned, written language of the institution, into her own dialect. I am reluctant, because I do not want her to think that her ideas are not clear. But, I tell her anyway, knowing that she’d thank me for the better grade if it came to that.

Basic linguistic theory tells us that within the educational system, access and continued desire for access based on propensity for success is based on socioeconomic status, which is, in turn, based on the degree to which the social dialect adheres to standardized English. Basil Bernstein demonstrates this by evaluating the use of “elaborate” and “restrictive codes” in speech. Middle class children are more likely to use elaborate codes, which is the code preferred by the schools. Elaborate codes provide contextual information, while restrictive codes are context specific. Restrictive codes used by working-class children are judged by the educational system as inadequate; they do not provide the contextual information that the institution seeks, despite that they may be communicating the same information.

Linguistic problems are societal problems—the disparity between social dialects and standardized English reinforces social inequality. Bloomfield argues that social hierarchy mimics the linguistic hierarchy: “The higher the social position of the non-standard speaker, the more nearly does he approach the standard language.” The student is ranked based upon her capacity to adhere to standardized English, her fluency in the language of power.

MandiWith this knowledge in mind, I advise my student to make changes to her paper. I tell her, “What you have here is OK, and your message has been communicated. I get it. But, here, now and in your future as a student, you will be expected to speak ‘academically.’” I wonder, should I tell her that this is the language of patriarchy, or that speaking academically is active in the maintenance of social inequality? That she, as a minority, will have to adopt the language of the majority in order to be a social success?

Instead, I walk the fine line of helping the student to remain true to her social identity, while also doing the best that I can to provide her with tools needed to reconcile this identity with the language of the academy.

The Rhetoric of Style: Writing is Like Getting Dressed in the Morning

Lauren Short, Consultant

You greet the day with panic because you overslept. Again. All that matters now is grabbing your things and making your way out the door looking reasonably presentable to society. Even though you may be thinking to yourself, “I have nothing to wear,” you somehow find a few articles that do the trick. When it comes to drafting a paper, a panic similar to a missed alarm can be so overwhelming that you think, “I have nothing to write,” but you shouldn’t feel pressure to create your magnum opus the first time. When it comes to writing (and getting dressed in the morning) you don’t have to reinvent the wheel–follow a formula that works for you and feel free to throw on an unexpected accessory once in a while.

While at the university, generally everyone has to wear a top, bottoms, and shoes (or at least one would hope). A typical paper includes an introduction, body, and conclusion. Though forms of style and styles of writing will differ within specific contexts, you get the basic idea. If you’ve got an outline to work from, the next step is easy. What really makes our work special is the extras that we use to define ourselves, our style, if you will, just as each person has a distinguishing characteristic about his or her choice in dress. If you’re not sure what your strengths are as a writer, feel free to ask! Ask your friends, family, professors, or your trusty neighbors at the writing center. Realizing that you have something unique about your writing, be it your indelible voice, your penchant for creating an organized paper, or your strength for research.

Recently, a student came in hoping I could help check over his paper before he turned it into class. From the get-go, I noticed that he had an unmistakable colloquial voice about his writing. While some of his paragraph structures needed work and he needed to find relevant research to validate his claims, I was taken with the way he could turn a common phrase and make it sound appropriate for an academic paper. Some of his words needed updating, but for the most part, I didn’t want him to lose his voice. This student’s voice was like a perfectly-tied bow tie upon his paper.

Another student needed help brainstorming for an upcoming paper and seemed desperate to lock down a thesis statement. Her sources were in order, her notes were organized, and she was able to answer all of my questions, indicating that she knew what she wanted to write, but was afraid it would all come out wrong. Since this student had indicated her skills for organization, I tried to steer her in the direction of asking questions that would answer her writing prompt. We made a few organized lists that detailed what she wanted to express and were able to cross out extraneous details until we were left with a few concise statements to form a thesis. This student’s organizational intuition was a polished pair of pearl earrings to pull together the rest of her ideas.

LaurenThe overarching message here is that just as we have a closet for getting dressed, we also have an arsenal of skills for writing papers. One man’s strength is another’s weakness, so it just takes practice to determine what you need to work on and what you need to highlight in your writing. Remember that just like personal style, writing can be fun! Let it be the place where you show off your knowledge, entertain a crowd, or move someone to tears. Once you get the basics, feel free to play around a little. Write in a format you’ve never experienced before. Try coming from a different perspective. Mess with language. Because if we conform to a prescribed popular notion of what writing is, we will never develop anything new. Create a style all your own–and if you need any help along the way, you know where to find us…

A Two-Way Street: Learning from Clients in the Writing Center

Scott Lasley, Consultant

With my first semester at the writing center complete, I call up the images of all the students I’ve worked with and surprisingly, find more faces of science and business students than English major students.  In the few months of my infancy as a writing consultant, it was especially daunting to work almost exclusively with students in fields of engineering, business, and chemistry because what could this lowly English student help with outside of mundane grammatical and surface-level concerns?  This sentiment was a mere manifestation of my “newness” anxiety that was barely a whisper by the end of the first month.  I became entranced with what work the non-English major students brought in to the writing center.  I found myself learning ideas and concepts that I never dreamed would cross my path from deformable models regarding imaging software to simpler things like how to write business letters and memos.  It was as if I had become the student, my eyes wide as I listened to the teacher inform me of some new piece of knowledge. 

I remember reading a student assignment about some new findings regarding a hominid species that supported the possibility of co-evolution in Southeast Asia.  Staring down at the pages of pictures and blocks of text on this new hominid, I found myself getting lost in the circled and highlighted prints and lines, entranced by the unexpected nature of this newly found knowledge.  What if it were true?  What if this changed our very understanding of world?  Dramatic, I know, but being presented with something I had never considered or even thought of made such findings like a stop sign of sorts in that I must wait and take notice of what lies in front of me.  Even though I knew next to nothing about evolutionary studies, I could not help but absorb all that could from what I saw, like a young boy does when listening to his father.  I craved to know more and found myself taking mental notes of names like homo floresiensis and co-evolution as I worked through the session.  As I sat down in front of my computer after the session, I quickly brought up Google, typing my mental notes into the slender search bar, excited less by what I may or may not find and more by the shear possibilities of what might be found.

This experience, like many others so far while working at the writing center, has demonstrated the importance ofScott consultants not only tutoring and teaching students in order to help them become better writers, but learning from them as well.  That’s not to say that we have to play the role of the engaged student or that we will always enjoy and want to know about what our clients are working on.  Desire and curiosity have their limits.  However, by being intellectually curious of the world outside the English department, we not only see what other writers are doing, but we also open our minds and by extension, our writing, to new areas of intellectual exploration.

Back to Work in the Writing Center

Adam Robinson, Associate Director

AdamWe enter this Spring semester with incredible momentum.  Last Fall, we increased our number of consultations (we did 2587 appointments!—200 more than last Fall) as well as our number of in-class workshops (we gave over a 100—almost double from last Fall).  And as usual, our online exit surveys showed high praise from the writers who worked with us.

Traditionally, the Spring semester is slower than the Fall—fewer students are enrolled, activity on campus is slower, etc.  But we have reason to believe that this Spring may be our busiest Spring yet.  In the Fall, we reached out to a number of student services offices and programs, such as TRIO, Family Scholar House, the Cultural Center, and Undergraduate Advising.  I once worked as an academic counselor for U of L’s College of Arts and Sciences, so I know firsthand the incredible impact and influence these offices have on the students who frequent them.  Sometimes students don’t feel comfortable asking their professors for help, but those same students will talk to their advisors and mentors.  For example, last October, I attended a college fair for the Family Scholar House, a support service for single-parent students.  The fair was held at one of the Family Scholar House residence locations, which allowed me to have informal conversations with the students in the program.  Many told me that they knew about the WC but didn’t feel comfortable visiting—some didn’t want to ask for help, others were afraid of criticism.  Being able to talk to them in a non-institutional space made a big difference.   Those working in these programs understand that too—that students need not just information but encouragement seek out help from professors and campus resources.  Our plan is to continue to build partnerships like these.

We have some side projects to work on this Spring, too.  U of L has begun migrating its website to a newer version of Plone (our content management software), a move that will afford all departments and offices more freedom to design custom sites.  We hope we can design a site that meets both the needs of our U of L community members as well as the needs of other Writing Center community members who may visit our site.  And while May is a ways away, we are gearing up for our second Dissertation Writing Retreat (check out our May 30, 2012 blog to learn about our first retreat).  The first one was a great success, and we’ve already received inquiries from interested students who have begun writing their dissertations.

Our main goal, however, is to keep offering excellent tutoring and response to students, staff, and faculty.  I want to personally thank Ashly Bender, Alex Bohen, Nancy Bou Ayash, Sam Bowles, Daniel Conrad, Michelle Day, Tika Lamsal, Scott Lasley, Brit Mandela, Jennifer Marciniak, Amy Nichols, Meagan Ray, Lauren Short, Mandi Strickland, and Katelyn Wilkinson.  Their excellent work is why writers keep coming back for help and why those same writers leave with smiles on their faces.  I’m happy to see all of our consultants again after a long break, and I’m equally excited to see some of our regular clients already returning this year.  And of course, I eagerly await the opportunity to see some new faces too—and hope they become familiar faces.

I want to wish Bronwyn Williams, our director, the best of luck on his Fulbright—he’ll be in England for six months doing important research on literacy.  That leaves me in charge of this place. So perhaps then, a personal goal is to not screw anything up!  I look forward to the challenge.

Finally, I want to send my sympathies to Dr. J Blaine Hudson’s family.  Dr. Hudson served U of L for many years as a professor in the Pan African Studies Department and more recently as the Dean in the College of Arts Sciences.  He died on Saturday, January 5.  Dr. Hudson leaves behind an incredible legacy not only at U of L but also in the Louisville community where he worked tirelessly for others.