As Cool As Mint Ice Cream

To start this off, I am a white, cis-female, bisexual, middle class undergraduate student. In case you didn’t notice, there’s a lot of privilege locked in those identities. The reason I feel the need to point this out is that I don’t often think about my inherent privileges, but I want to become more aware of how these privileges (and lack thereof) play out in my everyday experiences.

In Facing the Center, Harry C. Denny approaches racism from many angles. He tries to get at the complex dynamics that come from facing the question, “Which faces are permitted and tolerated and which ones face scrutiny, challenge or oppression?” (37). While Denny does go into many of these dynamics, and how we need to acknowledge and discuss them, the thing that really blew my mind was Denny’s discussion of immigration and American identity.

Denny discusses the “ethnicity” model, and how the ethnicity-assimilation model has its issues (especially because it offers a very falsely created binary). Then he comments that the “ethnicity model … has its roots in the study of voluntary or forced (slavery) immigration in European and American contexts” (39). Assimilation has led to identities merging together into one basic American identity. 

When European or Asian immigrants have come into the United States, they have had the opportunity to be seen as fully American while also forming their own ethnic and cultural communities. The dominant majority have accepted these mainly European immigrants, allowed them to live peacefully without suspicion.

Buuuuut… By the 1950s, African immigrants had been living in the United States much longer than these European immigrants, and they’re still looked on with suspicion. “…African Americans, whose arrival predated most immigrants, still struggled to eke out any minimal sense of integration” (40). African Americans are still Othered, still discriminated against, still appropriated/imitated.

As someone coming from a place of privilege, I have never even thought about this fact. I just took it as a fact that because of slavery, racial tensions will never go away. I never thought about the implications of Eurocentric thinking in the sense of immigration in the 1950s.

Even more interesting than this is the idea that students should have a right to their own language (42). Most people develop “multiple literacies” in their life, one at home and one at school. Denny argues that classrooms (and writing centers) should create an awareness that “home and school aren’t in opposition, but are mutually supporting reservoirs” (43).

I have noticed, especially in my writing center work and in my English classrooms, that people are often worried about sounding a different way when they write rather than the way they really speak. Many people I know, including myself, write differently than they speak. I am lucky enough to be someone who speaks and writes extremely similarly because of my background, but others who have only known one vernacular their entire life, essentially have to learn an entirely new language at the college-level. I cannot imagine how frustrating this must be.

“Language use and rhetorical strategies clearly have cultural reference rooted in communities bounded by shared identity” (45), and therefore telling someone they cannot speak a certain way invalidates their identity.

I have always told myself that I want to try to be the least judgmental person I can be. However, there’s a joke in my family that I am a “Grammar Nazi” (or “Grammar Queen,” which I prefer because Nazis were/are horrible) because I used to correct everyone’s grammar OUT LOUD. (I know… I was that person. I’ve changed!) In my desire to be nonjudgmental, I forgot that correcting someone’s way of speaking is a way of invalidating them. This is something I NEVER wanted to do, and I’m glad my eyes have been opened.

I have since changed my tune. While I do think that “standard” academic English does have its place (probably just because of the institutions rampant in our society), I now understand the importance of different dialects and languages. The written word has always been beautiful to me, but only when I thought it was up to my own standards. Now, I’ve learned to look at it with an appreciation for everyone’s differences. I especially appreciate when “nonstandard” dialects are used to make a point. (Learn the rules to break them the right way is something I’ve learned from my dad, who was a bit of a rule-breaker. To clarify, I’m a goody two-shoes.)

Denny speaks of “linguistic rights” (53) and “authentic language use” (48), which are both important ideas that I’ve never considered before. I now believe that every use of language is authentic as long as it comes from a place of honesty, but not everyone thinks this way. Minorities’ “linguistic rights” are being threatened daily, especially in the academic world. People invalidate certain linguistic codes, which inherently invalidates identities.

Because this blog post is a lot of me discovering my own thoughts (as they usually are), I feel I should end with the one little question that has been dangling around in my thoughts for a long, long time. It’s only now that I realize how much race, sexuality, and other identity politics complicate the answer. This burning question is:

Why can’t we all just get along?

Works Cited

Denny, Harry C. “Facing Race and Ethnicity in the Writing Center.” Facing the Center: Toward an Identity Politics of One-to-One Mentoring, Utah State University Press, 2010, pp. 32-56.

While working on my writing center homework, I have recently found myself being transported back to my Physics major days. How does physics relate to the writing center, you might ask? Apparently in lots of ways.

Above is an illustration of a general relativity concept called the space-time field… Science!

Who needs a time machine? I’m a writing center consultant…

In chapter 3 of The Everyday Writing Center, when Geller, et. al suggested focusing on “time that is relational” (33), I had a flashback to learning about general relativity. The authors point out that “time is experienced differently by different cultures” (Geller, et al. 35), which means time truly is relative to one’s experiences and cultural norms. However, they are not suggesting that I look at relativity; they are suggesting that I learn how to speed up and slow down time by using it differently.

At first, I was confused by the authors’ discussion of “slowness and speed” in a writing center consultation. I was confused as to how I should “expand and contract time in conferences…” (Geller, et al. 39). This isn’t Back to the Future or Doctor Who… How am I supposed to “perform time” (Geller, et al. 39)? I felt like I needed to grab a sci-fi novel to teach myself about time control, because I couldn’t imagine how expanding and contracting time would even be possible in reality!

Then I realized that I didn’t actually have to make twenty-five minutes last two hours; I had read the situation, make a split-second decision on what to do, and value the time I have. The authors discuss an example that completely illuminated this idea to me. It goes like this: In order to practice consulting, new tutors take twenty minutes to respond to each other’s writing. Then the veteran consultants reveal that, usually, they have an entire hour to do that work. “Shock and dismay wash over faces across the room. They can’t imagine, quite literally, how to talk about one paper for an hour. These same tutors, the next semester, will consistently need 70, 75, 90 minutes to do their work…” (Geller, et al. 41).

This example shows what the authors are advocating, that, despite the arbitrary appointment time limits, “things take as long as they take” (Geller, et al. 39). Our society is so obsessed with speed and efficiency that we often forget to slow down and just let things happen. In the writing center, this means being aware of time constraints, but not letting them rule the consultation. We need to savor what time we have and appreciate what we can get done in that time (Geller, et al. 37). We also need to be aware of the intensity of an appointment, and how that may be affected by time and stress. Intensity can be much needed in an appointment, either because of a last-minute writing center consultation or because the writer works better in intense situations. However, it’s also okay to slow down and talk about a single sentence or idea for the entire twenty-five minutes.

What is time?

Looking at “writer time” vs. “clock time” was instructive in my understanding of time in the writing center. The clock is not our master. The writer’s needs are. “If we are contained by clock time and disconnected from writers’ time, our practices may end up contradicting our mission” (Geller, et al. 34). I have learned that, as a consultant, I need to be more in tune to the writer’s time needs.

I recently had a consultation that was supposed to last an hour, but the writer ended up getting what she needed in only twenty minutes. We discussed how to format and write an annotated bibliography, and she decided that twenty minutes was all she needed. At first, I felt bad about this, like I hadn’t used the time properly. Then I realized that it was okay to let the writer decide what worked best for her, and if twenty minutes was the time it took to learn how to write an annotated bibliography, then that was okay.

The authors describe several different types of time. One is “fungible time,” which is

Hey, man.  I am your resident Writing Center Hippie.

sectioned off by units (seconds, minutes, hours, etc.). The other is “epochal time,” which is sectioned off by events (Geller, et al. 33). The idea that “time is in the events; the events do not occur in time” (Geller, et al. 33) completely blew my mind. Our systems of time measurement are completely arbitrary, as are our writing center consultation times. Instead of focusing on the measured time we experience every day, forcing ourselves into constraints that don’t really need to be there, we need to have more of a hippie mentality when it comes to getting things done. Things will happen as they happen, maaaannn. (Is that how hippies talk?)

Epochal time is also linked to people’s “internal rhythms” and “external social rhythms” (Geller, et al. 34). Time is literally controlled by our bodies and our circumstances. For example, “body time” means eating when you are hungry and sleeping when you are tired, not following prescribed notions of proper mealtimes
and sleep times (34). If we just let time flow naturally, it doesn’t have to be a burden.

Unfortunately, our school system does not allow for this type of event-based time very often. Everything has a set time-limit, and students are taught to expect extremely structured lives. But that is a rant for another time.

What I think we’ve really learned today, is that Albert Einstein would’ve totally loved writing center theory. 😉

Work Cited

Geller, Anne Ellen, Michele Eodice, Frankie Condon, Meg Carroll, and Elizabeth H. Boquet. “Beat (Not) the (Poor) Clock.” The Everyday Writing Center, Utah State University Press, 2007, pp. 32-47.

Can I be frank with you? I did not use the writing center last year. I was pretty confident in my writing abilities, and most of the classes I took were science/math-based or easy writing/lit classes. The only class that challenged me composition-wise was my Intro to Fiction Writing class, in which I made friends that would look over my writing (and still do). I didn’t think the writing center would give me anything that I would need. I think I almost went to the writing center with a final copy of my Fiction Writing short story, but I backed out because I get nervous in new social situations.

Now that I work at the writing center and know exactly what we do, I still feel awkward going to consultations! I sometimes doubt how qualified I am to talk to people about their writing, and then end up distrusting other consultants OR I think that as a consultant I shouldn’t need to go to the writing center for help. Now, I cognitively know that these assumptions are WRONG and that I should just be grateful for another reader of my boring close-reading analyses
and stuffed two-page Brit lit essays.

At this point in the semester, I have gone to the writing center twice. The first time, I went to a consultant I have known for a long time (we used to be childhood neighbors) and asked her to help me with a two-page MAXIMUM paper for my Brit lit class. (Who makes two pages a maximum? Why would you torture me like that?) Anyway, Anne had already taken a class with this professor and generally knew what to look for. We ended up having a long discussion about places I could focus in on more and what she thought

On the right is my tiny two-page paper staring at a regular-length paper.

were my most interesting points. She reassured me that what I had was written well, as I was worried about my ideas sounding choppy with such a limited space.

In the long run, I didn’t end up changing much about my short essay. I was intimidated by the page limit and didn’t want to make any changes that might possibly push it past two pages. But Anne’s advice was very encouraging and uplifting. I wish I would have taken more time to focus on the more interesting aspects of the paper rather than what I thought the professor wanted to hear, which was what Anne was trying to get me to do. Anne is someone I am comfortable talking with, and she creates a very space to discuss writing.

My second appointment took place earlier today. I brought in a six-page close-reading analysis of a short story and picked a consultant that I didn’t know very well, in order to get into the mind of a writer who was coming to the writing center not knowing anyone. I explained to the consultant that I was worried that I repeated the same point over and over again, but after reading some of my paper, she thought it would be better to focus more on my analysis of the textual evidence.

Kathryn said that she wanted to read in her head, because she thought reading aloud wouldn’t do much in the vein of wanting to look over the entire paper. Right after she finished my intro, she gave me a compliment on how well-written it was. Even though I know this is a tactic to encourage writers, I was glad that someone told me I wrote well. (Especially intros, which can be bitches.)

She also complimented some of my better-written paragraphs, making sure to say why these paragraphs were well-written so I could use those tactics in the future. For me, that is more helpful than just saying I’ve written it well. I intend to use this tactic in the future, as I often compliment at least one thing in a writer’s work, but I sometimes fail to explain WHY I am giving that compliment.

I was surprised at how much of the consultation was spent in silence. This was either because Kathryn was reading a paragraph or sentence, or she or I were thinking about something. At first, the silence made me uncomfortable, but then I realized that silence is necessary for progress. Silence doesn’t mean nothing is happening, which is something I have had to tell myself over and over again during my own consultations. 

Kathryn asked me some very good leading questions about my topic, like why I thought the author uses a particular analogy. (My paper focused on a machine paralleling how the patriarchy works, but I had never really thought about WHY the author used this comparison, only how it works.) She also pointed out places where I could expand on my analysis or make direct tie-ins to the quotes I had used. This was helpful to me because, even though I’m bad at thinking of things on the fly, I could mark certain places to go back to later.

Kathryn was very willing to answer all of my random questions, like if a certain sentence sounded weird or if my conclusion had a good enough “so what.”

Going into the writing center as a writer this time around was much more helpful, and I intend to actually make changes to my paper based on what we discussed. I felt like Kathryn was very nice about pointing out what she thought might be more important to look at rather than what I thought was the problem. In consultations, I always tell myself that I want to help the writer reach their own goals, but Kathryn showed me that sometimes it’s okay to point out more pertinent issues with a piece of writing.

I also felt surprised that some of the writing center tactics I myself have been taught worked on me, even as I knew what the consultant was doing. Every writer needs someone to help them if they are struggling, even if that person works at the writing center as a consultant.

Asking for help doesn’t mean I am a bad writer; it just means that I am an ordinary, flawed human being who is doing the best she can. 

And so is everyone else.

Works Cited

**personal experience!!

Pictures

http://frankitchangekit.com/about_blog/erp-title-transformation

http://confessionsofamindlessrebel.blogspot.com/2013/08/film-reel-3-pitch-perfect.html

http://qi.com/infocloud/height

Writer Intention vs. Reader Interpretation

https://www.enkirelations.com/compliment-words.html

https://www.jtellison.com/tao-of-jt/11217-silence1112017

https://financialengines.com/education-center/short-term-goals/