Dear October,
Sorry about the
relative silence this weekend. As you know, I went to Chicago for a Writing
Center conference. It was a blast! Myself and about thirty other consultants
sat in on all kinds of sessions and workshops about writing centers. It felt
strange to be kind of the odd one out, since Coe’s writing center has about
twice the amount staff as most other writing centers, and all of our
consultants are undergraduates, which is not the norm. One of the things that
the stuck with me the most was something that the Keynote speaker said in an otherwise
unremarkable speech. He said that learning was “High risk, high reward.” I
don’t know, something just clicked when he said that. For so long, my education
has been grade-centered. I would study hard for tests, but for the most part
the information wouldn’t stick. This can be a hard mindset to get out of. When
your whole world has been centered around getting the grade so you can pass the
class so you can get into a good college etc, the wonder that used to be
associated with education in elementary school quickly fade into the
background. This time, I’m not going to let myself fall into that trap.
Learning is too important to lose sight of it because I’m too focused on
getting from assignment to assignment. I love the idea that education is “high
risk.” It makes it sound like an adventure, like I’m trekking into a jungle and
I don’t know what I might find there. And the thing is, that’s true. You have
to be willing to brave the unknown, to sacrifice things you’d rather be doing,
to dedicate yourself. Because the rewards, while they seem impossibly long
term, are also extremely high. I think that is the single most important thing
I got out of the conference, and it came from one sentence of a speech that was
fraught with poorly written metaphors. Still there were other things I learned,
too, which luckily, I wrote down. Here’s a sampling:
“It can be good to
remember that books, grammar, and writing are not knowledge in themselves; they
are only symbols.”
“When conferencing
with a student writer, explore your discomfort, and use it as a jumping off
point for connecting with others.”
“Resist clinging to
one definition of “a good essay,” because this can change depending on the
context.”
The other highlights of the conference were running around
downtown Chicago in the middle of the night, eating delicious tiramisu at the
keynote luncheon, and playing word games in a fifteen passenger van for much
longer than expected because the driver we were following got lost multiple
times.
I spent the following two days after the conference catching
up on homework and hanging out with friends. Yesterday I went to Sunday dinner
in the writing center and had homemade minestrone made by the director, Dr.
Bob. Yum. I think I’ll stop this here, before I start waxing poetic about food.
I guess I’m hungry?
Laura
Several songs for several days:
Friends Make Garbage (Good Friends Take It Out) by Low Roar
Empire by Jukebox the Ghost
Shake it Out by Florence + The Machine
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