Maud, 3/8/13:
Maud wrote a second draft of her first paper for this week’s meeting. She had clearly worked hard on her introduction, thesis, and topic and transition sentences. She had decided not to bring herself and her experiences into the paper (we had discussed her anxiety about talking in the first person and I had suggested that she try it out), but she thought she needed a push and approved of my insisting that she include herself explicitly in the next paper. Maud had read my comments before our meeting and came prepared with relevant questions and rewritten or additional sentences and phrases. She had clearly spent a good amount of time writing this paper and preparing for the meeting (She stated that she had spent 3 hours trying to track down a source for one her facts. I commended her effort, but gave her some alternate options and told her that she should not feel the need to spend that much time on research.). After reading this week’s draft, I noticed that Maud struggles with proper comma use. I brought a quiz/handout on 8 comma rules (http://www.englishforeveryone.org/PDFs/Commas%20Practice%20Quiz.pdf) and we discussed the rules with which she struggles most and then completed the quiz together. I may bring little quizzes like this in the future (about grammar or not), as she found the quiz very helpful. She was somewhat wary about writing her final draft for next week because she has a busy week and wants this paper to be its best. I discussed many of the things I do at this point in the paper writing process, including a series of “final checks” for sentence-level issues, argument, etc. She liked many of these ideas and asked for my list of final checks at the end of our meeting. I also strongly suggested she take the thesis and topic sentences out in order to check them for organization and clarity. I expect that Maud will work hard on this final draft, but I am glad that we will be moving onto a new paper soon; with any more drafts, this paper will begin to get stale.
Haley, 3/8/13:
Haley wrote her third draft for this week’s meeting. She submitted the draft slightly late due to a search for a source. [The past few drafts have been late, although all with somewhat legitimate excuses. I emphasized that her final draft must be submitted on time and I think that she got the message.] We discussed her search for a source because much of her information is from a NEUR 100 class and is currently lacking citations. She will be searching for the NEUR 100 textbook this week but will let me know if she runs into difficulty. She is somewhat anxious about finishing this paper and stated that she feels it will never be finished. We discussed the fact that papers can always improve and I tried to reassure her regarding how far she has come and how she has a solid base on which to work. I sometimes feel as if she is not actually reassured or aided by my advice. I am hopeful that completing this first paper will give her confidence which she can rely upon for future papers. [She is also particularly worried about Lynne reading and grading her paper. I tried to reassure her on this front, but I think that receiving a mid-semester grade, whether it is good or bad in her eyes, will best assuage her anxieties (or at least give her something solid to be anxious about).] We started to go through my comments, working especially on restructuring the introductory paragraphs. She continues to be worried about writing so that her audience understands her argument. We discussed some places where she can be clearer and, at her request, signed her up to meet with a writing tutor, with the plan being that the writing tutor will tell her what they do not understand. I emphasized the importance of keeping the argument in the forefront of the paper and suggested cutting down some of her many introductory paragraphs. I think that, in an effort to explain things clearly, she spent too much time explaining complex processes before getting to the meat of her argument. We then went through the grading rubric line by line. She had highlighted aspects she felt she needed to work on. There were a few points which she had highlighted which I felt were not problems for her, but there were some points (particularly “analysis” and “clarity”) which we discussed in great detail. I empathized with Haley; this paper is particularly difficult to write because the material is very complex and the article lacks concrete evidence. She revealed to me that she actually no longer completely agrees with her argument. While she could adjust it, this would require an entire rewrite and I agreed with her that she should continue to write this paper with the current argument. Although I think that she will learn a lot from this paper, both she and I will be happy to see it finished. Next week’s meeting will take place at a different time, Tuesday at 5:45, due to a schedule conflict we had prepared for in one of our first meetings, but she will submit the final paper at her normal time.