Blog post 10 - Struggling with approaching non-conventional writing

Most of my work in the writing center has been on papers for English and Rhetoric classes, rather than the sciences. I find it rather refreshing when I am able to call back upon my experience in the field of biology, which is not often. This does not mean I can't provide assistance, but the assistance often calls back on basic education rather than the things I have gained after my Bachelor's Degree. 

That said, there are still moments that stumped me. A memorable appointment had a graduate student approach me about her project. She was conducting a survey on education, and she needed to answer questions about the project to get approval. So the format here was not a long paper, but just providing adequate and professional answers about the survey's scope and intentions. Critique was difficult because the purpose wasn't to build an argument. I tried to approach the problem by putting myself in the audience role: If I were asking these questions, what would I be looking for? Unfortunately, sociology is not my forte, but I could question the student to get a better idea of what was the norm for these kinds of projects. It's strange that the client can be a resource when the role of the writing center tutor is to help the client, but I think tutors can often spot connections or angles that the client has missed. 

Another type of document outside my comfort zone is creative fiction. Today my document review was a short story from an undergraduate in an English class. I have never studied much in creative writing, but I also enjoy reading fiction. My criticism can't just come from my own preferences, it has to be helpful for an author looking to appeal to a broader audience, including a professor who knows far more about writing fiction than I do. For example, I felt the antagonist's motivations were vague, weak, and cliche. But I didn't want to just tell the student to change the motivations. Instead I wrote down a list of possible approaches to the problem, of which the simplest (Changing the motivation) was only one. Taking this approach forced me to look for solutions besides my immediate preference, and I hope this made my critique more helpful for the student. I also looked at the student's request for what kind of critique she was looking for; if she's asking for opinions on pacing, she probably is not looking for someone to shoot down major story concepts. 

Both of these examples I relied heavily on the student for direction. But often this won't be sufficient for providing more than rudimentary advice. Maybe this emphasizes the need for a variety of writing center tutors to best address a variety of types of writing? 

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