9/15/13:
Saraphin read the Alex Johnson reading and wrote a self assessment of herself as a writer for homework. She said that the reading resonated with her and that it helped her reflect on herself as a writer. The self assessment was well written and insightful. We spent the majority of the meeting discussing matters she had brought up in the assessment. Although she listed many different writing struggles, I sensed two recurring themes: she has more trouble writing when she is not excited by the topic or cannot find “her voice” or her true opinion on a topic and her perfectionism makes her writing stilted and causes her to procrastinate. I had planned to show her a paper which had won a Wellesley writing award and to discuss how the writer inserts her “voice,” but I believe that her trouble finding her voice is rooted in her perfectionism and her difficulty looking at all sides of an argument, so I gave her a free writing exercise. I asked her to write about her opinion on US intervention in Syria. She wrote her thoughts down in bullet points and tried to ignore incorrectly spelled words and unconfirmed facts (she uses fact checking as a form of procrastination). She wrote furiously for a good amount of time and seemed to enjoy the assignment. She stated that it felt freeing and that she would free write before starting all future papers. We discussed how this practice helped her see all sides of the situation and to find her own argument. I helped her find a preliminary thesis. We discussed the fact that the thesis didn’t need to be completely for or against US intervention, but could be somewhere in between. We then discussed ways in which she could organize the paper. She wrote an outline and thought about transitions and topics for each paragraph. The resulting outline would be a very solid start to a paper. Finally, Saraphin stated in the assessment that she had some trouble with grammar, concision, and repetition. Her self assessment was nearly spotless in terms of grammar and was fairly concise and not repetitious. She said that she found creative autobiographical writing came easily to her and that she only struggled with grammar and concision when she was trying to write “college-y” papers. For example, she stated that she repeats things when her argument is weak. I told her that I would keep an eye out for grammar and concision in her future papers, but we agreed that if she continues to practice free writing and finds a multi-faceted argument, she may not have as much trouble with grammar and concision. However, I had brought a Purdue OWL handout on comma use which I thought wouldn’t hurt. We looked at it and it sparked discussion about different comma, semi-colon, and hyphen rules. Due to Saraphin’s interest in finding her voice, I assigned readings from Sin Boldly and Bird by Bird which focus on finding one’s voice and on perfectionism. One reading from Sin Boldly discourages writing with sarcasm because it can confuse readers. Saraphin had stated that she wants to write with “wit and sarcasm,” so I will be interested to hear what she thinks about the reading. Saraphin will be writing a 2-page thoughtletter for next week. I gave her the option to write about her response to the readings or to write about a current political issue and practice free writing and finding her opinion and voice. She will be writing about the Boston Marathon and is very excited about the assignment.