Liam's English Blog

March 25-29         Activity is starting to speed up in the writing center, if the last two weeks are anything to go on. Just last week, I must have had 4-5 sessions, making about half a week's worth of sessions for me, good for this semester, while this week I got a very similar number, close as I can recall. Friday felt like the busiest time, however, as my short hour and a half slot had both appointments booked, and I filled in for Kensie's last 45 minutes. The sessions I had on Friday were both relatively simple (I even had a return visitor from one of my past sessions, which is always nice), but both sessions revolved around one thing in particular. Works cited pages and in-text citations. In the first case, it was a matter of being unfamiliar with APA format, while the second was having trouble citing non-scholarly sources, such as the page on a gaming website.          The first student brought in a leadership paper, standard fair...

March 18-22        I actually managed to have a full day of appointments and walk-ins this Monday! The other days were devoid of activity, as usual, however I'm expecting things to pick up as final paper assignments are handed out and we approach finals week. But back to Monday. Three full appointments, two for assignments that I myself am, or was, working on. So needless to say I was familiar with the details of those assignments and capable of helping the students that came in (personal friends of mine). The third, well second technically, appointment I had was a bit of a different story.         The paper that the student had was a business ethics paper, and they were having trouble with citations, grammar, and a clear thesis. As per usual, I asked if there were any places in particular they wanted us to look at, after I read their introduction to see where their paper was coming from, of course. The session went on in a fashion of wh...

March 11-15         The first week back from Spring Break, I wasn't expecting any more appointments than usual, but to my pleasant surprise, two students came in for a walk-in session in the middle of the week. I'll focus my discussion on these two, emphasizing in no small way my relief and pleasure at being able to help student's better their writing ability. It does feel like it has been quite some time since I last evaluated any sessions of mine, but such is the Spring semester.         The first session was simple: a student brought me their cover letter and wanted me to read and give my thoughts on how it sounded - were they answering the questions they were trying to, did it sound "good," and what advice could I offer. The session went fairly quickly, as I was happy to say then, and still am now, that their letter was structured well, adhered to proper grammar practices, and had no misspellings. The only suggestion I made to them was th...

February 25 - March 1         While this week ended with a client coming in for a regular session, the vast majority of the week was spent without any - a common occurrence lately. I will admit, with such a drought of students coming into the writing center this semester, at least as opposed to the Fall semester, I'm beginning to run into difficulties with finding topics of discussion for these posts. Perhaps then the best topic to be discussed in the absence of regular writing appointments - for indeed, the appointment that I did get this Friday was just a simple read through that necessitates little mention - is our continued need for advertisement among classrooms to encourage attendance. The problem, as I find it, with the Spring semester, at least for writing center attendance, is that the majority of the appointments from the Fall semester, those being from Freshman, may no longer consider the services of the writing center as fondly as they did when they fi...