October 22 - 26

      This week was busier than prior weeks have been by a rather large margin, which was honestly quite refreshing. My two sessions on Monday, however, were perhaps the most significant. The first of the two sessions turned out to be a dual session in which two students came in with the same assignment, and so I decided to consolidate the two of them into one session to save on time, as I knew I had a 2:00 appointment just after them. The material we covered was actually quite simple, as they just needed help with clarifying the order of their citations along with some specifics to MLA citations. One example was a question on how to cite a chapter in a book or even a photograph. What I found enjoyable about this session was how it progressed. Both students were incredibly talkative and cooperative with me, and I found the whole experience quite enjoyable as I would help one of them with a citation and as they were working on that or looking something up on Purdue, I would turn to help the other who may have just finished working on one citation. In short, the session certainly had a good flow that was aided by how cooperative and willing to do work both students were when they came in for the session.
       The second session of that day was a student who came in with a longer form research paper that they wanted me to look over with them. The paper was just a little over six pages, making it significant to me as it was one of the few long form papers with many citations I've had the privilege of reading. The procedure I followed with the student was fairly standard - me reading the paper aloud while the student listened and occasionally asked questions or made changes after questions of my own. What I found to be the major issue within the paper, which I voiced in not so many words to the student, was that it seemed to deal with the typical "too much summary, not enough voice" issue. This is a common problem I have noticed with long form writing from undergraduate students. Whenever I ask students about the problem, the common theme that I've noticed is the phrase, "Gotta reach that page count," or "I'm just putting words on paper at this point." Of course I do my best to advise them in this area, usually citing personal techniques and outlining practices. One example I'm particularly fond of I received from a professor: keep your paragraphs to 15 lines or shorter. This allows you to have more paragraphs while keeping each one focused on a particular point of your argument or idea without losing the meaning. After sharing these strategies with the student, he thanked me and promised to come back for future papers.

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