Maricruz Week 2

This week I met with Maricruz to go over her thought letter and make sure she’s on the right track to start writing her first best effort. Her thought letter was not as “complete” as I would have expected, which may in part be due to my not giving more specific directions, though I also think it has to do with effort on her part. Since I really wanted to get her thinking about concrete ideas and analysis as soon as possible, we spent our session going over the readings and figuring out which points she wants to make and how she will begin her analysis. I think one of her major challenges is choosing a quote or a piece of information and figuring out how to analyze it effectively. To address this, we will spend some time over the next few sessions practicing this together. Often, I think when students have this problem, sometimes they just need someone else to sit with them and encourage them/talk about their ideas until they feel confident enough to write them down. It seems like one of those cases where she is analyzing in her head, but does not seem to know when or how to write her ideas down in paper format. I think that simply be having someone who really enforces that analysis is important, Maricruz will see a big improvement in the quality of her papers.