You have learned much, kind grasshoppers.
You have much to learn, kind grasshoppers.
This is a place to ask about a difficult session, the nitty-grittiness of grammar, or whatever else comes up. It's also a place to encourage your peers by answering their questions and sharing your stories.
4 comments:
Tester...I'm not sure this will work. This is so confusing. Writing center content to be included in near future.
Ella
My Most Difficult Session of the Year!
Okay, so I was going to call this my "worst" session of the year, but I've always had a problem with the words "best" and "worst." I think they're a little too simplistic. Hence "most difficult" instead.
My most difficult session was unfortunately one of my first. I was tutoring a girl in Tip Ragan's FYE, Civilization in the West. She was doing a paper comparing religious and secular thought on some topic (I don't remember what). The paper had a lot of punctuation, grammar, and diction issues--basically every problem you could possibly think of. She also lacked a strong thesis. For the most part, her ideas were either simplistic or vague.
The ideas that WERE strong were her own defenses of the Catholic Church. She told me at the beginning that she was Catholic and that her faith was a big part of who she was. I totally respect that. But unfortunately, her statements about Catholicism didn't quite fit with the prompt she was given. It didn't ask for that kind of thing. So I had a choice: 1. Suggest that she talk about other things
--and risk offending her--or 2. Find a way to make her interest in Catholicism fit with the prompt. I chose 2. However, I had trouble even guiding her in that direction.
To make matters even worse, she was supposed to cite sources for her paper. She didn't cite a single one--mainly because she was making her own personal defense of Catholicism. When I suggested she use sources to back herself up, she said she didn't want to. I asked why and got the following answer: "Oh, you're probably right. But I just don't want to make a works-cited page." I told her that she would have to do works-cited pages throughout her college career (and that she needed to learn how right away). I don't think she listened. After she left, I felt sure she would get an awful grade on her paper--and that I hadn't really prevented that. But you know what? I think this particular student needed to find things out for herself.
So I was ruminating on writing in science classes last night. I am in immunology right now and have been reading some Billy Collins poetry. For those of you non sciencey peoples out there, a macrophage is a type of immune system cell. It means "big eater". A mycobacterium is a type of bacteria that can evade the immune system by taking up residence in the macrophages. Enough said. Here is my poem:
Poem to a Macrophage
If you were large,
perhaps I would be
a martian inside the capillaries of a hippo,
or a mycobacterium
sequestered in your cytoplasm,
decorating the living room.
On a bad day,
my peptides would be sentinels
on your MHC molecules.
Yet, at least today,
I am none of these things.
Mostly, I forget about
the way you look next to a T cell.
Per our discussion on grammar day, an article from from "The Week" Magazine. (Not to be confused with "The Weak" Magazine that Anemia Quarterly puts out).
"The state of Missouri has issued millions of new license plates containing a grammatical error, but officials say they won't be correcting it. The new plates proclaim Missouri the "Show Me State. Since this nickname contains a compound modifier before a noun, it should read "Show-Me State." But a state spokesman says the design and working on the new plate was approved by motorists on an online poll. "If the people want it that way," he said, "that's what we're going to deliver for the people.
The masses really do control grammar. Now I think people should look @ the upper-level issues here: Why is Missouri the show me state?
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