As one of the new consultants in this exciting new phase of my life at the USF Writing Studio, I can say from my experience of almost 4 weeks of consulting that it has been both inclusive and fulfilling. What makes it thus has been the fact that from the very outset, consultants get exposed to heterogeneous writer backgrounds. You really don't want to get into your Public Health or Anthropology clientele cocoon by the third week and have the jitters when a totally unknown entity waltzing in one day to knock you off your high chair. I am torn between calling this a natural process of acclimatization or the embryo of some careful planning and process of thought on the part of the coordinators. I feel there are more elements of the latter to this than the former.
As someone who is guilty of often getting lost in thoughts, one of the apprehensions in my head as a new consultant prior to my first appointment was about coping up to the idea of providing quality feedback to everyone who came in. The added complexity of having writers with heterogeneous backgrounds turn up expecting results didn't exactly give me sleepless nights, but it sure occupied a corner of my mind for a few days. I feel that constant improvisation and learning on the job are some comforting aspects which I have managed to come to peace with, as time has gone by.
The USF Writing Studio (like every other organization) has certain guiding principles (which I intend to call as Rules of Engagement (ROE) for no particular reason) that form the broad basis of its philosophy. In summary, these are in the form pf guidelines and/ or strategies that the consultants could use in order to make their consulting experience a whole lot easier. An additional benefit for these are that they allow for consistency and fairness in standards. In an ideal world, a typical consultation shall try to upkeep all these ROEs. But the most lingering question that often came sweeping across my mind was the usual - how could all consultations/ writers be considered as equals? The very fact that each consultant sees a heterogeneous mix of writer backgrounds would naturally make it impossible to gauge every appointment on an equal footing.
Reasons attributed towards this could range from the topic at hand for discussion and the expertise (or the lack thereof) of the consultant on them, to the competence (or the lack thereof) of the writer. Should the consultant be proficient in the particular theme that the writer comes in with, I feel that there is a simple solution to this conundrum where the consultant makes up his/ her mind to not tinker with the technical content on display. But what happens in the case where the consultant senses that the writer is veering off track from the task at hand? Do we guide them to the right shore (like a good teacher would)? Or do we not worry much about it and go on with the consultation? Because you, as a consultant, are not responsible for the authenticity of your writer's work. So you need not exactly lose your sleep over that. But if you are like me (yay!), the teacher in you could be worried at this and your first instinct might be to hold their hand and take them in the right direction. And that's precisely the point where these ROEs stand the risk of being broken or not adhered to. And this is what precisely happened to me this past day.
This past day, I had an appointment with an ELL. For those of you who do not what this means, ELL stands for English Language Learners - who are recent newcomers to an English speaking environment (comprising of international students) and are often in transition personally, culturally and most importantly for us, linguistically. Their command over the English language is usually not satisfactory and the university (with its resources like us and many others) aids them through this transition period. I personally think very highly of them, primarily for the effort they are willing to put forth. How many of us would be willing to go to say for instance China and learn to speak Mandarin for university or go to Baku (Azerbaijan) and learn Azerbaijani to gel into the country? Not too many I suppose. So yes, the ELL appointment. This ELL person who came by the other day wanted to discuss the progress of her assignment with me. The assignment had 6 parts to it and the student was expected to submit them in 3 installments. She had already finished 2 of the sections, so was left with the other 4. The primary objective of the session was to go through the completed work and answer the most usual question that the writers often ask us - does this make sense? At the outset, I felt that the writer was not confident of her work. Maybe she needed a thumbs up on the content. A secondary objective was to ideate on the remaining sections. Straightforward enough, I thought.
As we were progressing on the first objective of the assignment, I was confirming on my initial assessment of the writer. Grammar was an issue to be addressed and on the scale of priority, very high, from what I was seeing on the manuscript. 10 minutes into the appointment, something else struck me. I was constantly keeping tabs on the objectives of the assignment that the professor had asked for and I realized the writer had veered off track. And from the looks of it, quite a lot. Her understanding of the assignment was completely the opposite of what was expected from her. I knew this was the time to stop the consultation and take a step back. For I didn't exactly know where this should go from here. I couldn't possibly go ahead and discuss the assignment on a completely wrong note, but I also wasn't sure if my intervention as a teacher would bode well with the writer. With the submission due date being hardly 12 hours away, I didn't exactly want to derail her world by spilling the beans too. I had to make up my mind soon with time ticking down.
2-3 minutes of intense brainstorming in my head and I made up my mind to confront the writer on the authenticity of her work. Going back to the objectives set by the professor, I outlined the tasks in a more simplified manner and it had suddenly dawned into her (with my added effort to stress on this aspect) that it was possible she may have gone wrong on this. I must admit that these kind of realizations suck. It is not upon us consultants to get them to the right shore, but it was in her best interest, I thought. The teacher in me had taken over from the consultant and I just had to go through this motion. Things got better towards the last quarter of the session and the writer was starting to show signs that she could still save her work. So to sum up, we didn't achieve any of the objectives that we had set forth in the beginning, but I felt there was a sense of greater good in the mind of the writer. She may have possibly saved herself from an embarrassing situation in her class, maybe even a lower grade, who knows!
I won't say that rules are meant to broken, but I guess some of them could be, if in pursuit of greater good. And this certainly won't be the last time.
By Nikhil Menon, PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering
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