Re: Political turf problems

[Neal Lerner <nlerner@acs.bu.edu>]

*Warning:  Long post to follow* (sorry, folks)

Wendy--Your reply about "professor as primary audience" made much sense 
to me, particularly in your goal to help students formulate the kinds of 
questions they need to ask their profs.  However, I have a real-life 
example of the complexities of this WC function.  This comes from a tape 
of a tutoring session I recorded as part of my dissertation work.  The 
student, a senior, has never come to the writing center before.  At the 
beginning of the session, the student tells her tutor, "I don't know how 
this works, so you should tell me how it works and then I'll just follow 
your lead because I've never been here before.  Actually, Professor X 
says he sends his students here all the time, so he thinks this is a good 
thing."

A couple of conversational turns later, the tutor asks, "Specifically, 
what did you want to work on with this project?  What are you coming here 
specifically for besides the fact the prof asked you to or suggested?"

The student replies, "For, mainly for content, that I've, that I've 
written the assumptions, findings, and I have made a valid analysis or 
criticism without repeating myself a hundred times."

So how does a tutor read this situation?  Is there much evidence as to 
what her prof is looking for in particular?  Should the tutor have asked 
different questions (what she did was to have the student read the text 
and then did a quickie evaluation of what the text's needs were)?

To complicate matters a bit more, here's what that student told me in an 
interview as to why she came to the writing center that *one* time (not 
unusual, actually; more than 50% of the students came just once that 
term):  "[Her professor] was very particular about writing, . . . and I 
just wanted to improve. . . . He actually suggested I go there. . . . He 
basically recommended it to me so like if I went there then obviously 
maybe that would help my grade or whatever.  I've never had problems with 
writing.  I've always gotten really good grades on papers."

This is from a student who was a dual major in International Relations 
and Environmental Policy, was about to spend a year in the Peace Corp and 
then planned on going to Law School, in other words, someone with 
probably a pretty complete conception of what academic writing was all 
about.  

I present this example mainly to generate discussion about what WCenter 
folks make of it.  The student came to the WC to satisfy her professor 
(and the implication is that merely going there would suffice); the tutor 
gets an unclear message about what the student feels her needs are (can 
the tutor judge whether the analysis is "valid" in content with which she 
is unfamiliar?).  Seems awfully complicated to me.

	Neal Lerner
	nlerner@acs.bu.edu