1st day in the Center - Not consulting

I was a bit nervous as to how I was going to spend TWO hours (which seemed like a really long time) in the center but was amazed at how easily time just flew on by.
I was asked to clear out old files and was complimented on how industrious I was being by Joy.
Thank you Joy! :)

I made an hour and a half go by and I watched Phil and Jenny deal with people with appointments and those that just had some questions. As for clearing out a drawer in the file cabinets it made me realize the number of potential ESL people that come in. All of our clients today weren't native english speakers. It should be pretty fun, especially since I think asians are a giant kick in the pants!

I think its gonna be super fun in the center, especially when everyone is a lot more comfortable with each other and us newbs know whats going on. I'm excited to go back on wednesday and scope out the book shelves and devise an awesome organizing plan.
Its one of my favorite things to do, organize. :)
Keep that in mind Melissa.

I'm a bit ahead of the game;

This blog has a purely academic function in the sense that I will write about experiences I have during a certain course I am taking. I waffled (yes, that is a word, me and my mother will debate until the death that it is) on wether or not I wanted to do typical word documents of my experiences in English 303, the Writing Center and any other fantastic phenomena that surround such things and email them in a equally typical and boring fashion. Always on the edge of over personalizing everything in my life, I chose the option to blog purely for the ease of it. It made me feel more comfortable about talking candidly about experiences I've had. I could collectively take a weeks worth of observations and build them into a type of revised essay that would count as the actual journal. I hope you like this idea Melissa, as normally this is how I work. I write like mad, all over corners of pages, ripped out pages that I can't throw away for fear of dire environmental recourse and than I frantically collect all the bits and pieces into something that resembles a coherent piece of writing that reflects on a particular space of time and thought.

I also like the idea that if need be, others could see my experiences. I mean if you're going to put all this up on a tiny little piece of the corkboard that is the Internet, might as well give others the options to weigh in on your experience versus theirs and who ever else may feel like chiming in. I know that social networking has been taken to absolutely gross invasions of privacy in the past and present, but being a responsible adult (I think), I believe I know the distinguishing fine lines of which not to cross for posting events, thoughts, debates, beliefs etc.

I had a lot of thoughts on the class we had tonight and also the conference we had last week. I throughly enjoyed meeting the veterans, I had the great pleasure of sitting next to Ian and RE the whole time and getting they're feedback as well as Phil's. I've had previous experience with Phil, on the occasion that I could not track you down Melissa for our initial interview that had to take place via telephone. I immediately felt entirely too excited to be potentially working with someone who ACTUALLY wore suspenders. I was like a kid in a candy store, but more like the girl starved for originality in a world so full of fabrications of ideas and merit. I want nothing more than to be surrounded by the beauty that is vision and motivation to create things that are purely YOUR OWN.

I have a feeling I will habitually exceed the 500 - 600 word limit on these entries as I don't expect you to count all the little bits and just the one I label JOURNAL #1. I just want context into how I got into all the particular phases of discussion and reflection that I will come into. Another thing I crave more than originality and purity of ideas and thought and discussion is the fact that too much of our world operates on little to no context. I drive myself crazy at night wondering how much better the world would be if we all asked each other two or three more questions to get a more firm grasp on the true situation at hand. Anyhow, I can blabber on about context for hours. I have a fascination with it and how it impacts everything around us. Its like some crazy metaphysical force I'm determined to prove in pictures and not words exists. I probably will not succeed.

So forth I have done all of this off the top of my head from what I jotted down in class. I know that we are not required to have an actual journal for the experiences we've had already but it seems unfair to leave out the first, baby steps out. I am about to get my notebook back out and talk a little bit about a few ideas I've had in the back of my mind and some that came out while I was in class.

I want to make a personal statement and observation I've formed since I first opened the wikipage and noticed how much younger and almost underqualified I feel while in class with not just veterans but even my fellow 303ers. I am not just the only sophomore-esque consultant in training but in numbers of years I have to be behind in the race by at least 5. I feel very little compared to everyone else. You could say at about your knees, Melissa. Which is pretty little isn't it?

I didn't want this to get to me too much as we are all technically all on the same page in 303, but I heard others speaking of other upper division classes I'll probably never get to because of the nature of my non-English related degree. I am merely a second year student that happened to experience one of the best years of English instruction she's ever received. And that is a hard title to get from me as I have had many great teachers in high school that I always thought would stay at the top, until I walked into Zach Kopplemann's class. He was my mentor, and in a very detached and distant fashion will continue to be one. I feel that his 101 and 102 classes did so much more than any other classes did (sorry Melissa I am not bashing on your class, I don't know how it could have been in yours, I'm sure it was also equally fantastic).
I feel that I found that one in a hundred chance of finding the class structure and instructor that fit perfectly. I was rather upset when I started in my 101 class having taken extensive english and writing instruction classes that went above and beyond the average high school class in my previous four years of schooling. I was absolutely miffed at the very thought of repeating elementary concepts that I knew I was beyond. I will say that that attitude didn't last long in Koppelmann's class, he whipped it right outta me but challenged it as well. I was asked why, and how more than in any other class I could remember. I had never had to think so freaking much in one sitting as we would in his class because it wasn't about word, structure, format or any other previously conceived English concept. We were working on CONTENT. And writing as a vehicle for effectively making your content not only understood but shared with others.
Zach taught us to be our own consultant in a much more watered down way than I will be by the end of this semester. I was given tools I hadn't thought to use, and hadn't been allowed to use in his class that let me be not just a better writer but a better thinker about writing and subject matter and form and everything else. I flourished and had some of the worst and best writing experiences from his class. I want to make this entry not look so intimidating at first for you, but I left class with a lot of thoughts in my head and so much excitement at what I'm about to do and all kinds of feelings and expectations that I had to get it out before it was a giant waste of cognitive energy.

I'm so excited for this class, and the experiences I'm about to have. I can't thank Zach, and you Melissa enough for giving me this opportunity and I'll also kudos myself too for having the motivation to go and get something I wanted.
Goodnight.