So many things!

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Annie Brown

I’ve done and been to so many things over the past few days that I don’t know which ones to blog about! As a result, I’d like to share a lot of those things with you in the form of a list with some brief descriptions.

Saturday

-I went to MAWCA, a writing center conference, where I learned some new things and bonded with my coworkers

Sunday

-I finally gave my presentation on archetypes and alchemy in Harry Potter. The presentation was a success and my co-presenters and I had dinner at an Irish restaurant called Ryan’s Daughter afterward.

Monday

-Another week of class, but for the first time this year, truly gorgeous weather!

-Pinwheels! Rainbow pinwheels graced Red Square in order to promote student contributions to the Annual Fund. Private colleges such as McDaniel require contributions from alumni and other donors in order to make the cost of college more affordable for students.

-Allies Week began! Our campus gay-straight alliance, Allies, sponsors this week every year to voice support for LGBTQ issues. They host a lot of fun events throughout the week!

Tuesday

-My only class today was canceled so that the professor could meet individually with us to discuss our papers in progress.

-I spent two hours in the writing center, leading a tutoring session, discussing MAWCA and social media, and finding and photographing a new cover photo for the McDaniel Writing Center Facebook page. It was time well-spent!

-I took a walk around campus and took some pictures of the daffodils in bloom.

-An event called “Around the World in 80 Plates” took place in Red Square. I had fun tasting a number of the worldly desserts served!

-I registered for classes for next semester! I’m taking classes in rhetoric, writing, literature, and German cinema. I even snagged a spot in a yoga class!

-I went to “McDaniel’s First Time,” the first drag show ever held on campus. Being at a drag show was strange and unfamiliar to me, but I enjoyed it (and I learned that bringing a bunch of one dollar bills to a drag show is an expectation).

Overall, the warm weather, combined with the ample social interaction and plenty of fun things to do has made me a happy girl this week! Though busy, April is probably the best month of the spring semester because there’s so many fun things to do!

MAWCA Writing Center Conference

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Amber Slater

Like Clara mentioned in a recent post, conferences are a valuable part of the college experience because we get to explore our passions and find out what other colleges or organizations are doing in our fields of interest. Yesterday, six members of our Writing Center staff, myself included, attended the Mid-Atlantic Writing Centers Association conference in California, Pennsylvania.

The theme of the conference was 3D, so after our sessions we wandered around campus with the 3D glasses they gave us and admired the statues.

The morning part of the conference consisted of sessions in which students and Writing Center directors from other schools shared their most recent research. I attended two sessions about working with non-native English speakers and one on the various roles that a Writing Center tutor might take on during a session. I especially enjoyed the very first session that I went to because it was a round-table discussion about working with ESL students, so the session took on a dialogue format and I was able to both contribute some of my favorite tactics and learn from various staff members at other schools.

The keynote speech took place after lunch, and the speaker addressed the importance of remaining inquisitive and not simply accepting a well-known narrative about our workplace. She questioned, for example, the tactic of reading out loud in the Writing Center and whether more research needs to be done about the usefulness of that tactic.

The basic message of her speech, to constantly question what is accepted as the norm, applies to my general outlook on college life. This time is for us to find what we are passionate about, conduct research, and question answers!

Peer Editing

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Kaitlyn Vadenais

Peer editing is an important part of the process, particularly in college where professors do not have time to individually read and edit each student’s paper before they need to be turned in for a grade.

Many of my classes have built in time for peer editing before a larger assignment is done. You will bring copies of your paper to class and spend time helping each other. I will also organize times with some of my peers in that class for outside editing if it is not offered.

Sometimes I can convince one of my roommates or classmates to read a paper or a section of a paper for me and I will reciprocate by reading one of theirs when they need an extra set of eyes.

If you still have trouble finding someone to read over your paper, that’s where the Writing Center comes in. They are a completely free student service who’s job is to help you with your paper, at any stage in the writing process. You will be matched with a student tutor in the discipline that the paper is due. They help you by not only marking up your paper but working with you through the changes.

McDaniel has many ways to help you as a writer.

A Pi Day fit for an English major

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Annie Brown

I’ve always seen Pi Day as a day that makes math accessible to everyone. It’s a day for people to make pi-based puns and jokes, eat pie, and perhaps even learn about some of the math that has to do with it. (If you happen to be someone who does want to learn something about pi, check out this video.) I made sure I stopped by the math department this afternoon to get a tasty slice of pie to celebrate and chat with some friends who are math majors.

While Pi Day is most certainly a day to celebrate math, my boss Josh, the director of McDaniel’s writing center, decided to add an English major sort of twist to it by hosting a a get-together he called Pi and Pie on Pi (Day). He invited all of the current writing tutors and tutors in training to his house for an evening of tacos, homemade ice cream, games, and of course, pie. He also screened Life of Pi for those who were able to stay.

The evening was so fun and delicious! We played Mennonite Madness, a very simple and super competitive game, and Whisper Down the Lane Pictionary, which was hilarious. The homemade food was delicious, especially the chocolate mocha Oreo ice cream. If I hadn’t had so much homework waiting for me back on campus, I would have stayed to watch the movie too.

I had a great time and I had fun getting to know my fellow writing tutors some more. We have a group of intelligent, friendly, and funny people who currently work and will be working in the Writing Center, so when you’re a student on the Hill, be sure to schedule appointments with us to get some awesome feedback on your papers and other writings!

Whiteford and Rouzer tutoring

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Amber Slater

We’ve started some new initiatives at the Writing Center this year, one of them being Sunday night tutoring in the freshmen dorms. From 7-9 PM, I work with girls in Whiteford while Charles does appointments with guys in Rouzer.

Our Sunday night tutoring is ideal because students who have never been to the Writing Center before can work with us in an environment they are comfortable and familiar with. Also, there’s the additional perk of not having leave the dorm in order to get writing help!

As with all of my Writing Center sessions, students can come at any stage in the writing process. I might work with one student on brainstorming a thesis while the next appointment focuses specifically on double checking in-text citations.

Interested in scheduling an appointment with the Writing Center? Check out our website and make an account! We still have a lot of open appointments during midterms week.

from http://writingcenter.mcdaniel.edu/

If you can’t make it to the Writing Center this week, here’s a few tips you can use on your own:

1. Read out loud! You’ll catch things that your eye just scans over when you read normally.

2. Read “backward.” Start with the very last sentence of your paper and read it for grammar. Move up to the next sentence and read that one. Then keep going. Because your eye isn’t scanning to the next sentence, your reading slows down and you’re able to catch sentence-level errors.

3. Talk it out. Stumped on where to start, an idea for a body paragraph, or how to end? Ask your roommate let you talk about it out loud. Don’t try to make it perfect, just work through the ideas you want to convey. When you say something you like, write it down before you forget!

Getting back in action

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Annie Brown

Like so many others, last week I caught what has come to be called the McVirus and the McPlague, so I was home from Thursday morning through Sunday evening recovering. Though students on campus coined those terms to include the name of our college, it’s important to know that gastroenteritis, the medical name of the McVirus has been widespread across the region this year and the disease definitely did not originate here. And because college students live in such close quarters, a quick and wide spread of a virus like this could have happened on any college campus, not just McDaniel.

I came back to McDaniel after my four-day weekend feeling about 90% better, but my homework and other obligations were 110% ready for me to be back. I’ve been doing a reasonably good job keeping up with things, but I still get tired pretty easily. Since it feels like I have a million things today and they were stressing me out by floating around in my head, I made a list on one of my whiteboards of assignments and when this week they need to be completed by. This way, instead of convincing myself I have to do 50 things, I’m able to prioritize and break things up into smaller tasks.

Last night was fun because at 8:00, I met up with other members of Contrast, our campus literary magazine, so we could decide which prose submissions we should include in the magazine. Contrast holds a contest at the beginning of every spring semester, and McDaniel students are allowed to submit up to three pieces in each of three categories: prose, poetry, and artwork. The authors/creators of three best entries in each category, as judged by the members of Contrast, win prizes! Going through the prose pieces ended up being a long (and even tedious at times) process, but it was worthwhile because we were able to thoroughly discuss each piece before deciding whether or not we should publish it. While one piece was everyone’s clear favorite, the most difficult part of the selection process was choosing which pieces should receive second and third place in the prose category. Eventually though, we came to a satisfying decision that we all agreed upon. I can’t wait to do it all over again for poetry next week!

Today was fun because I finally had a chance to shadow a writing tutor in the Writing Center for the first time. (I was supposed to shadow her last week, but I began experiencing symptoms of the McVirus within an hour of when that was supposed to happen.) In my Peer Tutoring class, we’ve been reading a lot about the pedagogy and philosophy of writing centers, so it was nice to finally see a lot of that in action! Once the appointment was over, I also enjoyed talking a couple of the writing tutors who didn’t have appointments. Since I was sick last week, it had been a while since I had had a nice conversation with some of my peers.

Overall, I’m doing the best that I can without overburdening myself. I know that if I try to do too much at once, I’ll stress myself out and I also won’t have enough energy to get me through the rest of the week. Tonight, I’m looking forward to a couple of meetings with Alpha Lambda Delta, our first-year honor society, and the Free Press, our student newspaper, before hitting the books and hopefully going to bed at a reasonable hour!

The McPlague

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Amber Slater

Starting around dinnertime and late into the night of Tuesday, Feb. 26, students found themselves battling for space in public bathrooms due to extreme flu-like symptoms. At 10:45 AM, a campus-wide email alerted the McDaniel community that we are experiencing an outbreak of gastroenteritis, a virus.

Though many students are sick and stuck in their rooms, various campus services have reached out to those affected in order to keep the school week running smoothly. Here are a few examples of ways that students can gain help from campus offices:

Online appointments with the Writing Center are typically only available to deaf students, graduate students, and students studying at the Budapest campus. This week, any student can sign up for a virtual appointment so that sick students can still have someone look at their papers.

Glar is offering a system for sick students to use their meal plan. Roommates may swipe the card of an affected student and, with the help of a Sedexo manager, pick out food to put into a Styrofoam container to bring back to the dorm.

Those who can’t attend class don’t need a note. While students are encouraged to keep in touch with their professors about missed work, they don’t need a doctor’s note based upon the high volume of students who have not been able to attend class.

Because we live in such close proximity, viruses spread alarmingly quickly on college campuses. Though students may feel alarmed by the number of affected students, there are resources that aim to help students make it through the week.

A great day for chocolate

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Annie Brown

Though I didn’t have a valentine this year, chocolate was here and everywhere for me this Valentine’s Day.

After I was finished class this afternoon, I went to my campus mailbox to find a lovely bar of fair-trade chocolate I had ordered for myself last week. (I also received two Valentine’s Day cards and a birthday card from relatives. My birthday is less two weeks away!)

On my journey to Glar, more chocolate came into my possession. I bought a pussy pop–a chocolate lollipop shaped like a vagina–to benefit the Vagina Monologues and their One Billion Rising cause. Since the Vagina Monologues show was last weekend, the pussy pops were on sale for only a dollar! I also made sure I picked up some Hershey Kisses from the Writing Center table outside of Glar.

Dinner was when the real chocolate treats began. There was a huge buffet table with strawberries and pineapple for dipping in chocolate, cupcakes (in chocolate and vanilla), Rice Krispie treats (which were not chocolate but they were read), and chocolate-dipped almond cookies. The most enticing and delicious dessert, however, was a rich chocolate cake. It was moist, filled with chocolate ganache, and covered with chocolate shavings. It only took one piece to fill me up, so it was good that I decided to skip dinner!

I actually haven’t eaten any of the chocolate I picked up today at the post office or outside of Glar, but tonight, I indulged in some of the chocolate that I got in the mail from my mom on Tuesday.

Since my waistline can handle only so much chocolate in one day, I now have plenty of chocolate to indulge my sweet tooth for a long time!

Visiting the Writing Center

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Annie Brown

I have a confession to make: up until this point in my college career, I had never had an appointment at the Writing Center. A lot of this has to do the fact I tend to finish my papers at the last minute. I had always had this unfounded idea that in order to take a paper to the Writing Center, it should be pretty complete first.

However, this semester, I’m taking a course called Peer Tutoring. This may sound boring and nondescript, but it’s actually a class to teach me how to work in the Writing Center. It’s been neat to learn about how the Writing Center works, what services they provide, and how to be an effective writing tutor. As part of this training, I’m required to make appointments at the Writing Center to experience the process of peer tutoring firsthand.

It’s become a lot clearer to me that going the Writing Center can be extremely helpful at any stage of the writing process. For example, students who need help with brainstorming and prewriting can schedule an appointment at the Writing Center to focus on that.

I went to the Writing Center with almost three pages of a paper that needs to be around four to six pages. While my ideas were solid, I wanted to discuss ways to better organize the content of my paper and discuss ways that I could make it more interesting. The paper I’m writing is actually about my writing process, and we decided that to make it more engaging, I should include some specific examples and anecdotes to illustrate aspects of my writing process.

Because I’m in training to be a writing tutor, throughout the discussion we also talked about aspects of McDaniel’s writing center and tips on how to be a good tutor. Though I have a few peer tutoring guidebooks to help me learn how to be a tutor, I know that my firsthand discussions will be particularly memorable lessons. There’s just something so genuine about advice from one tutor to a future tutor.

Overall, I’d say this evening’s trip to the Writing Center was a success! I got some great feedback on my paper, learned some important things about the Writing Center and being a writing tutor, and I even got to spend some time brainstorming strategies for how to go about another paper that I’m in the process of starting.

When you’re in college, take advantage of the Writing Center. No matter how good of a writer you are or what stage of the writing process you’re in, you’ll receive valuable help and advice from a friendly and knowledgeable tutor!

Personal Victories

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Annie Brown

I’m finally home for Thanksgiving break, and it feels so wonderful! I missed my mom and my puppy and my siblings so much, and we were all very happy to see each other when I returned to my home away from McDaniel.

I was afraid that I wouldn’t have exciting things to share with my folks other than the normal “the semester’s going great, but I’m pretty stressed this time of year,” but in a period of less than 24 hours before heading home, I received not one but two pieces of awesome news!

The first news I received last night after my Hero’s Journey class. Last week, I gave a presentation along with a couple of other girls about elements of the hero’s journey and alchemy in Harry Potter books 5-7. Another group presented about the same things in the first four books. After this week’s class, my professor pulled me and my friend Emily, a girl from the other group, aside to ask that we give a presentation about Harry Potter and the hero’s journey at a conference full of people who use Jungian ideas (the ideas of Carl Jung) in their work.

We’ve actually had a number of interesting guest speakers in The Hero’s Journey whose work is tremendously influenced by Jung–clinical social workers, an art therapist, a woman who practices the I Ching, a shamanic drummer, and even a Vedic astrologist.

Presenting about Harry Potter to these people will be a pretty cool experience. Like any presentation given at a conference, it will also look great on my resume, but most importantly, I’ll have the chance to work closely with one of McDaniel’s many awesome professors to put together a spectacular presentation. The presentation isn’t until April, so Emily and I will have plenty of time to work on this presentation and have this unique experience.

I got more fabulous news when I checked my email after lunch this afternoon! I received an email from Josh Ambrose, the director of McDaniel’s writing center, to tell me that I have been accepted into his peer tutoring course for this spring! By taking this course, I’ll be eligible to be hired in the Writing Center next fall. (So if you come to McDaniel and visit the Writing Center, it’s possible that I’ll help you out with your paper!) I’m super proud to be enrolled in this course now, because I not only want to be a peer writing tutor at the Writing Center but also because I had to get two letters of recommendation and interview with Josh just to get a spot in the class. I was so excited that I was screaming, cheering, and running throughout my suite–much to the annoyance of some of my suite mates who were trying to squeeze in after-lunch naps, as I later found out.

So tonight, I came home very tired but quite proud of myself. I feel victorious! It’s such a great feeling to know that all of the hard work I’ve been putting in this semester is being paid off with meaningful outcomes that are happening right now. I’m hoping that when I get back to campus after break, I’ll be able to use these accomplishments to help motivate myself through the rest of the semester.

Stories from the Hill

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