I had never heard of OWL. In fact, halfway into the semester is when I figured out how OWL is used at USI. I've only seen or heard of one session with OWL. The 'mock session' was a good practice before beginning a real OWL session. Like face-to-face sessions, I was forced to decide which appraoch to take, how directive to be, and to what extent. For very simple mistakes, I highlighted it without leaving any comments. Most of these errors included misspellings. This is a risk I had to take, since I didn't know if the client would know the correct spellings. I had noticed a few errors the client had made that were seen throughout the essay. For the first mistake, I explained why it was incorrect, how to correct it, and provided an example. I believe this was for comma splices. For other errors, I struggled trying to find out what to say so that I wouldn't say too much yet also provide a good explanation. In the mock session, however, we weren't able to continue the session with more e-mails. We weren't able to further explain any questions or concerns the client may have had. All in all I believe this mock session was beneficial and a good practice. I am motivated and anxious for my first OWL session, especially one on Whiteboard.

Throughout the semester, I've been required to read a new text of the ways of tutoring. Each text was different: Some focused on the client, some the text, some the collaboration, and others the interpersonal communication. Each week I felt like I was being pushed one way then pushed another, never staying in the same spot. Of course, each week I would attempt to apply what I had learned, often failing miserably. I don't believe whether I failed or did well really mattered, though. I believe it was the recognition and attempt of applying a new way to work in the Writers' Room. It was the mixture and change I made to each way of tutoring that helped me develop a way that worked for my clients and for me. The feeling of being pushed and pulled was, at times, frustrating, but is the way I feel in the Writers' Room.

As Matthew Ortoleva points out in "Centering the Writer or Centering the Text: A Meditation on a Shifting Practice in Writing Center," consultants are often pushed and pulled from a text- or writer-centered session. I'm certain all of the consultants feel like they're pushed and pulled, even within a session. Sessions should be individualized. This should also pertain to sessions that are only text- or writer-centered. If a session is text-centered, the consultant (as he should see from consultation notes of previous sessions) may see that the client struggles with tenses and choose to individualize that session to solely that. If a session focuses on the writer, it may be individualized to developing and brainstorming an essay and its parts and organization.

I have come to realize that the feeling of being pushed and pulled reading the articles and texts was foreshadowing the feeling of being pushed and pulled in the Writers' Room. Yet with the article by Ortoleva, I am certain that this feeling is no feeling at all; it is the way the Center works. There is no center. There are middles, middles that, like a sailboat in a river, sway back and forth, wherever the wind takes it. It is a middle we must get accustomed to, though it is always changing, like wind and water. The consultant is the wind; the client, the river; the text, the boat. The wind must work with the river to make the sailboat float, to make it flow towards its destination. It is a collaboration between the river and the wind - the consultant and the client - that keep the boat afloat, that make the session successful.

Ortoleva, Matthew. "Centering the Writer or Centering the Text: A Meditation on a Shifting Practice in Writing Center Consultation." Praxis: A Writing Center Journal. http://projects.uwc.utexas.edu/praxis?q=book/print/209

We already know a common misconception of the Writers’ Room is that it is for bad students, those who require specific and guided assistance to make up for their “lack of intelligence.” We already know that, when a student walks into the Writers’ Room, he believes his writing can be better, implying it’s not good enough. Yeah, a student with a learning disability has to face up to his situation, (if he hasn’t already in high school or middle school) but will he? I think it’s easier for him to do this compared to, let’s say, someone “who can’t write.” I think it is those strengths that outweigh the difficulties he may have. It is the “…but I am really good at X” he says after pointing out those difficulties.

At the university level, the client should already know what it is (or isn’t) that helps him. This leads us back to what we continue to hear echoing: collaboration. The consultant must ask questions, must provide statements leading a client somewhere, but not telling him where that place is. These are clearly strategies we’ve learned in class and already applied in our practice. We work to the necessities of the client. We individualize.

Today, I met with a freshman who was writing for a biology class. Her paper (filled with subscripts, scientific elements, graphs, long scientific names you can’t pronounce, and all of those cool things we English majors hardly experience) was by far the best-written paper I have seen this semester. She wanted her essay to be proofread for silly mistakes writers often oversee, check for grammar, and to be “polished up.” Constrained by time (go figure) I took the line-by-line approach, an approach I feel most comfortable with and the one I’m probably best at. I, however, find myself wanting to move away from this approach, to try something new, to experience, to modify, to mix, to individualize.

But I continue asking myself in what ways I could have benefitted her without the line-by-line approach, since her essay was well written. Trying to think of another way I could have worked with her, and in attempt to move away from this approach, I find myself returning to it. I find myself returning to the line-by-line approach but not as myself as the “aproacher.” In fact, I’ve flipped it around. I think I could have had her look at her essay, as if it were mine, and follow the line-by-line approach. I would’ve asked specific questions about uncertainties in the essay (transitions, organization, formality, etc.). I think this would have been beneficial for both of us because she was already, in my opinion, a good writer, and because most of her mistakes she caught on her own. If she were to miss something, I could ask non-directive ways for her to see corrections. I also believe this is a good strategy because it allows her to read it critically from a consultant point of view rather than reading it as her paper for BIO 127.