Last Thursday, as Kari and I had sessions with each other
for our summaries, I noticed something about advising that I hadn’t thoroughly
considered previously. When we’re working with writers, there are occasionally going
to be weaknesses in their papers that we will overlook—not because we lack the
skill to catch these weaknesses, but because professors’ expectations for
various types of writing are not universal.
For example, both Dr. Mattison and my English 101 professor
have taught summary writing in class, but their expectations regarding the
content and length of a summary differ in many ways. (Now, of course, I am
stuck with two opposing voices in my head that attempt to control the structure
of my summaries…great fun, that is.) Being aware of these differences, I made a
conscious effort to write my most recent summary according to the comments I
received from Dr. Mattison, and I was glad to have the opportunity to get Kari’s
feedback to see if she thought I had addressed the issues mentioned in my
previous summaries. However, I quickly realized that my main concern (including
enough of the smaller details instead of focusing on only what is necessary to
understand the main idea of an article) was impossible for someone other than
Dr. Mattison to address. What is considered necessary information for a summary
is somewhat subjective (and dependent upon one’s definition of ‘summary’),
which makes it impossible for an advisor to evaluate a particular piece in the
same way the professor would. Granted, in my situation, Kari had experience
writing summaries for Dr. Mattison as well, but needless to say, it was still
impossible for her to see my paper entirely from his perspective.
This problem reminded me of the second day of class when Dr.
Mattison gave us all the essay written with many, many errors, then later
explained that the assignment was to write like someone in grade school (the
particular grade slips from my memory). On the surface level, advisors may
begin to offer constructive feedback immediately, but doing so blindly may
actually lessen the quality of the paper according to the particular assignment’s
requirements. Still, for the aforementioned case, there is an additional
problem: no matter how thoroughly an assignment is explained, no advisor can
see a paper exactly as a certain professor would, which would be necessary in
order to help a writer with a concern similar to mine. We can learn to
understand general expectations, but for certain types of writing, it is
impossible to know how a professor will evaluate it in the end. There are alternative
ways to handle the situation, including suggesting that the writer visit with
the professor, or asking about any previous feedback given for similar pieces,
but my final thought it this: there are, of course, sessions in which we, as writing
center advisors, cannot be as useful as we hope to be, and in some cases, we
may not even realize how little help we’re actually able to give a writer. Because
of this, I think it is important that we consciously evaluate both the writer’s
assignment and his or her concerns in order to be sure the advice we give is
helpful. Then, if we’re aware of the possibility that some of those concerns
may extend beyond our advising abilities, we’ll be prepared to direct the
writer to the professor instead of offering advice that may harm his/her work.
As I read over this post again, the problem and solution
seem somewhat obvious, but thinking through these situations surely helps us to
prepare for our future work as advisors. I know I certainly would rather
evaluate these sorts of possibilities now instead of feeling lost when I
encounter them in actual sessions, and in this case specifically, it is better
to be aware of the possibility of these issues to avoid giving destructive
feedback or false assurance.
Yay for thinking ahead!
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