Shadowing #4

This week's consultation was interesting for two reasons: one because the student had brought in just one paragraph of the paper she was writing and two because I participated somewhat in the consultation.

In the beginning of the session, when I saw how little the student actually had written down, I wondered how long the conversation would last and whether or not the consultant could be that helpful. I was reminded of what we learned about the prewriting process and was anxious to see if it really would be possible for there to be a meaningful session even though there wasn't much for the consultant to work with. It turns out that the student did actually get a lot of the meeting. She asked many questions about things like how she could structure her paper and things she could do to make the writing process easier.

I contributed a couple of times during the discussion. The assignment was a literature review and I gave suggestions about how the student could possibly structure the paper, a tip for the type of citation she had to use (which the writing consultant had never had to use before) and gave advice for how she could frame the question she was answering in her introduction. I had never participated in a shadowing before, so it was a new and somewhat exciting experience for me.

As the weeks progress, I'm getting more and more comfortable about working with students and the various stages of preparation they have done.