Writing Center Meeting Minutes - 04/11/11

Business Items:

Writing Center remains open on symposium day but no afternoon tea.

Arial and Ally are planning a dessert party, sign up on the sheet any dietary restrictions or dessert
preferences.

Participate in the bake sale for kids against hunger.

Fill out the survey for the first year competition by Monday night.

Next week: guest is Rob S. talking about his experiences teaching in Japan

Tonight’s Guest: Allison Carr

Graduate student in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Cincinnati

Taught writing and took courses in writing theory during her master’s degree

Started out with literature but fell out of favor with it and decided to move to composition

Works a lot with the emotional quality of writing, makes her confront herself as a writer and a
person

Found it hard to allow herself to write on papers since working in the writing center

Writing a dissertation on failure, as something that is not bad but is worth doing and allows for
reflection

-Why we write

-What makes good writing

-How does not following the rules let you see things differently

Questions for Allison:

What is the advice you give to students who don’t know why their writing isn’t working?

- Don’t follow the rules (“guidelines”) too strictly

- Look for the things that are definitely working and figure out why
- Help them understand that it is not a helpless situation
- Figure out why they are writing the way they are writing
 - Students know good writing so they think they cannot achieve that level, break that
barrier

What do you do for students who are completely apathetic?

- Try to find a way to make them feel like it isn’t the worst thing in the world
- Assignment design is a big part of it, allow them some freedom/level of enjoyment
- Let the students write about topics that allow for originality
- Sometimes easier topics are those with less written about them so students can invent
their own voice
- Sometimes there is nothing you can do

Could you elaborate on your failure project?

- Did project on archives for texts ex. who decides what goes in the national archives?
Who decides what constitutes important American culture and what voices get
silenced?
- When people experience failure it is solitary and does not get recorded
- Personally experienced an epic fail
- Assume that graduate students are supposed to have their “shit” together but in
graduate school there is a constant disconnect between who you are and who you are
supposed to be, struggle to be the best at what you do
- Wanted to create a space where people could talk about this, recorded as part of
history and go into an “archive”
- Place for people to submit anything related to failure big or small

What is the ultimate goal for your archive of failure?

- To be awesome
- For people to find it valuable
- Provides a medium for her to collect other peoples experiences about failure for her
research
- Analyze the language we use to describe failure

A doctoral thesis in creative writing is analyzing other people’s creative writing?

- It depends on the program

- Ex. Discuss why something is valuable, write a novel, or analyze a classic work

Next Meeting: Monday, April 18 2011; 6:00 pm – Lynch Room