Week Eleven, Last Week of the Semester

AND FINALLY I HAVE SOMEONE TO WORK WITH (with whom to work... yada yada yada)!!!

Since the calendar has been updated to include the apprentices, this is the first time that I actually had an appointment. Unfortunately, so did my mentor, who was not there to help me out at all when I had questions.

My session this week was sort of a mix between two of the videos we watched for class: "The Angry Writer" and "The Reluctant Revisor". The student was referred to the center by her professor, who told her that she had no thesis and was making forced comparisons that did not make any sense. She believed that her points made perfect sense, and they could stand fine for the paper so long as she revised her thesis.

I started the session by asking the student to explain the assignment to me. She told me that her only guidelines were that she had to choose two books from the first half of the semester and compare them. The assignment was due before the end of the next day, the last of the semester.

Understanding the instructions of the assignment, I could see why her professor complained that the argument was flawed. Instead of comparing two texts, she used Augustine's religious ideology to explain why the relationships in Song of Solomon failed. Unfortunately for the student, this was not the point of the assignment.

After reading the paper, I struggled for a minute with how to tackle this problem. It was evident that the student did a lot of research when considering her topic, and she picked out a lot for good textual evidence to support what she was saying. Her grammar and tone were not problematic in the least, and there were no evident typos I could find on my second read through. However, she did not really have a strong comparative thesis. However, while I was trying to help her recreate her thesis, I ran into some ethical difficulties.

I was not sure how much I should actually talk about the texts with her. The paper was meant to be her analysis, not mine, and I found it extremely difficult not to just tell her what I think would make a good comparison for the paper. I recalled that Freed wrote, "We would be doing students a disservice by not voicing our own opinions, forcing them to scrutinize their work." From there, I tried to play like devil's advocate in our discussion of the two works. I told her that I thought she could make a good comparison between what Augustine is looking for and what Milkman is looking for, and how they each change when it is found. While she did not understand completely what I was saying (and I was glad because I was afraid that I had perhaps gone too far and given too much advice), I gave her a minute to think about it while I went out to the hallway to "get a drink of water." When I came back, she had a brand new thesis statement, completely of her own making and far enough removed from what we were talking about to make me feel like I had done a good thing.

Finally, I told her that it may be easier to make the comparison if she wrote a paragraph about one text, and then the next about the other text. She told me that she really appreciated my help and that she "couldn't wait to get it over with," which for me was comparable to "I'm really excited about finishing this thing."

HAPPY END OF THE SEMESTER!!
(one more post to come as a reflection)