To Rx or Not to Rx?

A Blessed Burden

When it comes to helping writers, how much is too much?  At what point is our “consulting” more like “conforming” to an academic norm and does this help certain writers?  Based on writing center philosophy, the whole point to what we do-- help writers of all capabilities at any level during the writing process for any style of writing assignment—is to offer the appropriate level of guidance.  Honestly, I feel that there are going to be times when my assistance is going to be more directive. 

The senior literature major that’s having trouble rephrasing a poignant element to her analysis of Milton may need a more prescriptive assessment.  She knows the material far better than I do, so what she needs is someone that she can offer a synopsis of the text and together we hash out how to explain on paper how it applies to the context she’s arguing.  Situations such as this call for a more prescriptive approach.  The writer needs more direction out of respect to the direct approach they have with us regarding the material.  I support the fact that many writers such as the example given arrive to their consultations with not only drafts to work over but an in-depth understanding of the material they’ve researched.  But it’s not just these writers that can benefit from this approach.

There are times when writers come in with an assignment sheet and have absolutely no clue where to start.  These sessions pretty much remain at the pretextual stage of consulting.  I get to know them as a writer, as a learner.  We collaborate on what it is their professor is wanting for the assignment.  Open ended questions allow the writer to respond freely while I scribe the ideas down.  This week was a significant week as my internships melted into one another. 

A business major taking a literature survey from the professor I happen to be interning for,  was in  need of extra guidance revising her take-home midterm essay.  The assignment?  To compare and contrast two authors—and one of each of their works—from two different Realist literary periods.  The context of the situation is that she is a first generation college student who’s spent most of her school career in ESL writing courses, her conferences throughout school revolved around her interpreting for her parents.  She is a student who’s remained on the margins because the state offers minimal guidance to ensure that she receives the best education available.  Granted, to get into this literature course, one must complete writing courses through Eng. 102—the assumption being that having passed 102, there’s an understanding of analyzing text, sharing and expanding on this knowledge through writing, research, and basic MLA format. 

Needless to say, the assignment was not fulfilled to the professor’s expectations.  Rather than have her fail, however, the professor has enlisted my help to teach our young writer how to accomplish this assignment.  Collectively, we hope to guide her to a level of understanding literary analysis so that she may do so in the future on her own. 

My first session with the student proved to be the most vital.  We always talk about the importance of setting the tone—building rapport through our pretextual stage of the session before jumping into the writing.  I learned about her study habits, the extra home obligations that force her to skip steps in learning and study on the fly or late into the night.  I learned that she loves this literature class because she’s reading things that she never read before. “The tasks asked of me are harder than what I’m used to but that okay”, she said.  She’s up for the challenge and based on her upright posture and gleam in her eye, she’s ready for me to show her how to tackle it head-on. 

The first thing we tackled was the assignment description:  compare/contrast two different authors from two different Realist genres.  The first oops was her misreading the fact that the two writers had to be from different realist perspectives.  She had inadvertently compared two social realist writers; this is something that is very common.  So we talked—pencils down, books closed, essay put away—I asked her about what she remembered about the Realism lecture.  She responded with amazing clarity about the three major styles and that she remembered them because some of the writing reminded her of stories her family told about when they immigrated to America.  She was amazing—before, when we’d talk after lecture or even at the beginning of the assignment breakdown she was timid, anxious, and almost fearful that I was going to ream her for not completing her essay correctly.  Here sat a young woman who was knowledgeable and comfortable talking about the differences between social and regionalist Realist writers to me, her teaching intern. 

Because of her ease, I approached the subject of the essay more minimalist, I asked her what two stories, specifically, could she compare and contrast given what she knows about the styles of writing.  She immediately knew which of the two social realist writers she had chosen before.  But she was struggling with tying down a regionalist writer she felt had a similar “flare” or gave her the same emotional connection to the story as who she chose.  Rather than force her to keep digging, I began to point out some similarities to a fiction piece that she’d said was one of her favorites.  She countered that she loved the story, the imagery, and the strength in the main character but that she didn’t see how it fit into the assignment.  We could have been there for hours if I’d remained hands off—I wanted her to remain motivated that she really did know her stuff about the styles of realism.  We went back to the second author’s bio.  She found that the author wrote about a time in her childhood, captured a culture that was disappearing when she was young.  The light bulb moment came when she realized that even though the area wasn’t like how the author described at the time she wrote her story, that she was still a regionalist writer because of how she was able to make her feel like she was in the bayou with the little girl (protagonist). 

She was on a roll.  We worked together walking through each author’s work, their approach to writing, etc.  I wrote down the list comparing and contrasting so she had a reference later when she began to write her paragraphs.  Where I felt I was more prescriptive was in offering her ways to think more about how she analyzed the text.  Using terms like protagonist, emblems, figurative language—I not only told her why it was important to know but how to look for it.  She picked it right up.  Soon she was racing through the book pointing out and asking if her analysis was “correct”.  Then she stopped, “Wait, I know I’m correct because I can defend my statement with this example, huh!”  The ginormous grin stretching from ear to ear sitting across from me said it all.  To close her session, I asked her to free write an introduction to Realism, tying back to when I first asked her to tell me about what she knew—now with a more scholarly tone.  She and I will be meeting next week to go over her writing that dives into the similarities and differences of the two author’s work. 

It’s definitely a work in progress, but I know that she’s going to succeed.  I think that if I’d remained hands-off she would have felt more frustration at not knowing how to find the answers.  Prodding her with needless questions to lead her to the answers could have made her feel inadequate.  The walls that would have built up during the session could have prevented her from seeing her true potential. 

I never want my clients to feel like they are only good enough when I help them.  I do have another student in the same class that makes comments that she feels like she only understands the reading or the tasks asked of her when I’m around, so I need to figure out how to remedy that.  The issue there is I can’t get her into the writing center—only so much can be inferred via email communication.  Anyway, there are many times when I go into a session anxious that I may not have enough to offer the client, I feel that their wealth of knowledge about their subject, their major, the intensity of the project will overshadow my knowledge about communicating this information through writing.  But the times that they leave motivated, confidant in their skills because I’ve had them demonstrate what I’ve shown them and explain why it works—tells me that I am doing them justice in taking a more directive approach.