RE: Goal of writing center

[Bobbie Silk <bsilk@keller.clarke.edu>]

Neal makes an interesting observation about a possible difference in the
way that we might regard helping a student with a resume as opposed to
helping a student with an fyc essay.  He also states our essential hope
that "the manifestation of learning to write will show up in the writing
itself."  Both observations point us toward our central dilemma--time and
the conflicted needs of the student.

>From a student's perspective, the need to have a well-written resume and
the need to turn in a well-written paper for a grade seem the same.
Unfortunately, this perceived immediate need is often reinforced by the
student's teachers who complain to/about us if students say they've
visited the writing center but turn in papers with "errors."  
Understandably, faculty are concerned about their own immediate
needs--getting through a stack of papers without grinding their teeth to
gritty nubs.

Delayed rewards always seem less compelling.  If chocolate cake weren't
more immediately satisfying than getting into a smaller swimsuit next
summer, stetch pants would never have been invented.  Metaphorically, the
goal of the writing center is to help students pay for swimsuits on
layaway while necessarily offering only small portions of chocolate cake
(we can only do so much in a tutoring session). Of course, the students
want full portions of cake, while their professors seem to think we should
be dispensing miracle good-writing pills that will prevent students from
ever again dangling modifiers or allowing flabby prose to bulge over their
belt buckles.

It's our unique dilemma--that which makes our jobs more interesting than
we sometimes want them to be.

I read about a study by psychologists in which they offered lab
animals--birds, I recall--a choice between immediate and delayed
gratification.  The birds went for the immediate gratification, even when
the delayed rewards were more substantial and exciting.  The only way that
experimenters could persuade the birds to opt for delayed gratification
was to eliminate the immediate-rewards option.  Given a choice between a
lever that gave them nothing and a lever that gave them something after
awhile, the birds eventually (and apparently reluctantly) began
exclusively to select the delayed-rewards lever.

The only way this could happen in writing center work would be if the
institutions and faculties fully understood and accepted our goals, agreed
to grade differently, and developed a taste for bad-to-improving student
writing (no matter how long it takes to read).

Feeling more realistic than cynical, I'd still have to say, "fat chance."

Let's face it--we're caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.  At
least the view is beautiful.

  --Bobbie