For my EWM internship I decided to work at the Florida State Reading/Writing Center. I became aware of the center during the fall of my junior year, when a teacher required us to go to have our papers evaluated. After that exposure, I found out a friend from class was currently working there, and she had nothing but positive things to say about the experience. I decided to enroll in the RWC Peer Tutoring class during the Spring of 2016, and after taking the class and falling in love with the RWC and all that they do, I asked the director, Dr. McElroy, if I could complete my internship through the RWC so that I could continue to work there. I worked over the Summer C semester for 8 hours/week, and then continued the internship through Fall 2016, working another 8 hours/week.
This internship was an incredible opportunity for me not only because I loved the writing center and this allowed me to spend more time working there, but also because I am currently trying to decide what career path I should take and this has helped give me some hands-on experience to try to figure that out. I have been struggling for the past year to try to decide whether I want to continue down the path to become an editor or if I want to follow the passion that I held for many years and try to become certified to teach. This internship offered a wonderful mix of the two, since it is editing with a teaching slant; the mission of the FSU RWC is to help create better writers, not just better writing, so each paper that was brought in by a student was a chance to help explain to them in a new way how and why things were not quite right in their papers, how to fix it in that specific instance, and how to avoid or address it on their own in the future.
For this internship, I worked 8 hours a week over both the 2016 Summer “C” session and the Fall semester. I have now worked in every different building that the RWC is offered, having done Summer C in the Williams building and Fall splitting my time between the ground floor of the William-Johnston Building during the day and Strozier in the evenings. This was great for my schedule, since I could take classes on campus and then not even have to leave to go to my internship. In the summer, I worked Monday and Wednesdays from 10am-4pm (with an hour break for lunch) in the Williams building. I worked 3 hours on Tuesdays in the William-Johnston building and then 3 hours Tuesday evenings in Strozier, as well as another 2 hours in the Willam-Johnston building on Thrusdays. These schedules were ideal because it gave me long stretches of time to get into my tutoring “groove,” but still offered enough down time to keep me from becoming burned out. It was also interesting to see how different each space was, and what different kinds of attitudes and expectations they evoked from the students who came to us.
The vast majority of our sessions were a half-hour long, but hour-long appointments are not rare either. Both of these appointments had positives and negatives; the shorter thirty minute appointments meant that we had to go through very quickly and might miss something or not be able to go as in-depth on something as we might have needed to, but it also meant we had to be precise and it would force both the student and me to be as precise and aware as possible. The hour long appointments were nice because we could get through all of the paper and discuss more in-depth what actions the student would need to take to get their paper to the level they wanted/needed. However, they could be dangerous because it was easier to get bogged down in the smaller details and forgo discussing more global concerns.
The standard appointment consisted of a student coming in with a rough draft of an assignment, and they would say that needed me to “fix it” and that they were not “good at writing.” We would talk through what they were worried about and what their goals for the paper were and what was currently making them nervous or unsure about it. We would read through the paper together, usually aloud but sometimes silently if they preferred that, and would discuss areas that had issues that they had identified or that did not follow or were not clear. Often I would make changes with the student during our session, so that they would not forget everything we had discussed by the end of our appointment and be no better off. I would point out issues of grammar or sentence structure and talk them through why the way they were phrasing it was incorrect and ways they could change it to make it grammatically correct. I would also discuss how to avoid mistakes that I saw as recurring issues throughout their paper, and what strategies they could use to be able to identify and avoid making that same mistake in the future. When we would go through everything together aloud, I found that students could often identify their own mistakes and correct them even before I would tell them to look at it. This suggested to me that more than likely that student was hearing/reading the paper over for the first time. This emphasized the importance of revision to me, so I would always tell the students that the biggest part of being a “good” writer is rewriting/revising. Most students found this odd, since they felt like a “good” writer should not have to revise at all because they were able to put everything onto the page beautifully the first time. I made it my mission to change the minds of these so-called “bad writers” and during every session I would make a point to say that the way to become a strong and confident writer is to read through and revise at least once. I would also share that I tend to rewrite or revise my papers an average of 4 times before I am satisfied with them, and while some students did not believe me, I could see that that fact helped them to see how important and necessary revising is and that it is nothing to be ashamed of.
The most common work that I had students bring in were research papers, especially from freshman comp/FYC classes. Generally, these students came to us either because they were unsure of how to approach the paper because this was their first exposure to that kind of writing, or because it was required by the teacher. The students who were there because they were nervous generally had much more productive sessions than students who were required to be there, since being required to utilize the service tended to create a mixed bag of reactions, from aloof to thankful to downright annoyed. The most common issues I found for the freshmen students tended to be not knowing how to format a paper, use quotes and outside sources to bolster their argument, and struggling to create a cohesive and cogent argument. The most common issues I found for the freshmen students tended to be not knowing how to format a paper, use quotes and outside sources to bolster their argument, and struggling to create a cohesive and cogent argument. These students were sometimes my favorite to work with, since they had few preconceived notions and were ready to listen to my advice, but they could also be very frustrating because they were sometimes either so overwhelmed or so aloof that it felt like I was not making a difference. These students were sometimes the best to try to “create better writers, not just better writing,” but they sometimes did not respond to that idea and insisted on simply fixing the issues right in front of the without heeding advice for the future.
Throughout my tenure at the RWC, I also worked with students whose first language was not English, and they therefore had more specific and different needs than other students. Working with ELL students presented unique challenges for me to find ways to explain the how’s and why’s of the English language and its conventions, and they tended to ask more, and more specific, questions of me. This forced me to think more deeply about the mechanics of English and how to explain it to someone whose experiences are significantly different from my own. I found myself looking up things all the time, from prepositions to article usage to formatting, to get a better grasp on what the rules were for each of these things and how I could give better examples in the future when asked. I also really enjoyed working with ELL students because they tended to care more and be more interested in what I explained to them, and I never felt like the work we did was unappreciated.
I generally had about 10-15 students per week, sometimes less and sometimes more. I tended to have a good deal of repeat students, who would either come to me several weeks in a row to work on the same assignment or who would simply come back to me to get help with something else because we had already built rapport. I thoroughly enjoyed it when students would come back, since it enabled me to give me tailored and specific advice that would help them better. I also like working on the same assignment for multiple weeks and seeing it go from the rough draft that they are embarrassed by to the final that they are proud to submit.
I dealt with a variety of paper types and lengths, but I would hazard that most students came in with at least 1,000 words, and on average I would say about 1,300 total words each. Although we help students through every stage of composition, from brainstorming and outlining to revising and editing, most students believed they had to have full rough drafts to come to us (I had so many students come in and apologize that their draft was not quite finished yet). Since I tended to average about 10-15 students per week, I would say that I tended to edit about 13,000-20,000 words per week, if not more. I had several students bring in papers that were upwards of 10 pages, and a handful more bring in full on dissertations that were anywhere from 50 pages to almost 100 pages. These lengthier papers tended to be done either in chunks or spread out across multiple sessions, but they were still significantly huge pieces. However, since I also had several students come in to work with me because they had absolutely no idea where to begin, I feel like the two extremes balanced each other out.
I also had to navigate a litany of different genres, formats, styles, topics, and fields of study. I could have a FYC research paper for the first appointment, and then a chemistry report the next, and then a neuropsychology thesis the next, and then end with a poem or email. It was always interesting, and I am glad that I have the experience of having to work with so many different genres because it has made me comfortable and confident when discussing or editing that work; even if I do not know all of the jargon used, I can look at the sentence structure and be able to see if the sentence is logical and clear. I also learned a lot of interesting things while reading these papers, so that is definitely a bonus.
Because this internship involved editing a wide variety of student works, and because those works were works in progress that we generally only saw and commented on for a short period of time, I do not have any of the final copies of the student works I edited. However, the RWC has a system in place to record what took place during each session and make comments about what needed to be worked on at the end of the session. I will be using these report forms as evidence of my work, and I attempted to make them as detailed as possible throughout the semester (although I only now realized it would have been a great idea to make note of the length of each piece of work edited, and I highly recommend future interns do so). I feel that these report forms reflect the time and effort I put into each appointment, and the sheer number of them, I think, help to reflect that the number of words edited certainly exceeded the bare minimum.
My time in the RWC at Florida State has been incredibly gratifying, and has helped guide me to a path for my future. Because of my time in the RWC, it became clear to me that I need to follow my passion and become a teacher, and I have begun applying to graduate schools in order to get my masters and be able to teach at the community college level. I am passionate about writing centers and want to continue working in and conducting research about them, as well as research ELL populations and their needs when it comes to writing/reading. I also plan to work as a TA whilst in graduate school, so as to get teaching experience and build upon my experience as a tutor.
Word Count:
Home Page/ About Me: 278
Editing Work: 291
-Client Report Forms: 13,616
-Average Words Edited: ~13,000-20,000 per week
Letter of Evaluation: 255
Internship Reflection: 2,630
Resume: 1,077
During the summer and fall semesters of my senior year, I decided to do my required EWM internship at the Florida State Reading/Writing Center. I became aware of the center during the fall of my junior year, when a teacher required us to go to have our papers evaluated. After that exposure, I found out a friend from class was currently working there, and she had nothing but positive things to say about the experience. I decided to enroll in the RWC Peer Tutoring class during the Spring of 2016, and after taking the class and falling in love with the RWC and all that they do, I asked the director, Dr. McElroy, if I could complete my internship through the RWC so that I could continue to work there. I worked over the Summer C semester and then continued the internship through Fall 2016. I decided to continue with the studio in Spring of 2017 because I had fallen in love with the work I was doing and the fact that I got to help people every day and get better as a tutor and refine my approach. I enrolled for the Spring internship for one credit hour, planning to work only 4 hours per week, as per the requirements of the internship. Before our session officially started, however, I was approached by the temporary director to see if I would be interested in working weekly with student athletes as a tutor, having recurring students that I would engage with every week throughout the semester. I was thrilled to accept, not only because it would be a new challenge, but also because I was excited to see how it differed from the work I had already done. I also got a position working in the Digital Studio as a consultant, which was something I was very keen to do and thoroughly excited to accept. Both of these positions were new to me, but since I had previous experience with the writing center I had no problem and was not particularly nervous.
This internship was wonderful, since I not only got to stay working at the RWC, which I have fallen in love with, but it was also presenting new challenges and ways for me to alter and adjust my tutoring style to new situations. In the class, we had discussed student athletes specifically as a special population that comes into writing centers, and how best to approach these sessions and how they differed from other sessions. I was excited to put the theory into practice and to see how it lined up with reality and my current tutoring style. It was also incredibly helpful because I decided to pursue a graduate degree in English in order to become certified to teach community college. I have elected to attend FSU again in order to do this, and through the English department Graduate students must work in the writing center with student athletes, so this will make next semester much more effective for me as a tutor.
I worked in the Williams RWC and Digital Studio this semester. This will be the third semester that I will have worked in the Williams building, so I am most familiar with it. I enjoy the Williams building most, especially because we tend to have the most English-related papers come through there (likely due to the fact that it is in the English building). This semester especially I worked almost exclusively on English papers, since the student athletes were primarily enrolled in the RWC class for help with English papers and assignments (although we worked on any and all writing assignments they might have from any of their classes). It was also interesting because I had several students who had the same teachers, so I would see multiple iterations of the same assignment; this was often very helpful because it would enable me to model for students who weren’t entirely sure how to approach the assignment with other work that, even though it was a completely different topic, might illustrate how to think about the assignment. It also helped to ensure that the interpretation of the assignment that I had was at least mostly accurate, since I could consolidate all of their feedback and discussions from/about the class and work it into what the assignment sheet said so that I could give more pointed feedback and advice. I also think that the English building itself helps lend itself toward students thinking more in line with what they are taught in class, so when brainstorming ideas in the Williams building they might remember more of what their lecture had been about and work that into their assignments (that is utter speculation, of course, but it does seem to work fairly well in my experience).
The vast majority of my sessions were 30 minute blocks, although I had a good ¼ that were hour long appointments. I worked almost exclusively with student athletes, although if they were absent I would take walk-ins who were in the space for help. I also had some availability open up half-way due to scheduling changes, so I got to work with non-student athletes somewhat often this semester. As far as my student athlete appointments went, I found that the students who had 30 minute sessions tended to be more productive on average, since it was easier to sit down and focus on the one thing for 30 minutes and then leave than it was to focus for a full hour in their already over-packed days. It was also beneficial when the student was between assignments and had little to work on, since we wouldn’t have to scrounge for or belabor work to the point of being useless. However, that being said, there were just as many times that the hour long sessions were essential, either because the student had so much to do, or because it allowed them time to think and reflect on what/why they were doing something, or because they wanted to focus on an assignment and make sure it was completed by the time our session ended.
My work with the RWC during Summer and Fall of 2016 helped to enable my ability to take on the challenge of working with the same students throughout the entire semester. I enjoyed this in a different way than working with a single student one-on-one for their 30 minute or one hour session and then probably never seeing them again (or only seeing them again when they had something specific they wanted to work on). I really liked working with the student athletes, but it was definitely a different experience from the work I had done up to this semester in the RWC. I think I was a lot more productive with these students because I had established a tutoring style pretty early on that I felt would work with their unique personalities best, but I could also adapt it as I got to know them better and see what worked and what did not. I also think it was one of the most rewarding semesters I have had because I got to see directly how my tutoring helped them create/mold their writing process. I got to watch student’s writing grow over the course of the semester, and seeing the difference between the first assignment and the last was incredibly rewarding and exciting. I also conducted interviews with each student during their last session to see what was most effective for them and what was not, and how they view writing and if anything had changed for them that they noticed, so that was also gratifying to hear what they had to say about that.
The standard appointment for these Student Athletes consisted of a discussion of what assignments were upcoming and what the most pressing ones were, their plans for how to work through those assignments in order to meet the deadlines, and a discussion of what ideas they already had about the assignment and what they would require. We would then either brainstorming ideas for the paper/assignment and then outline it, or (especially for smaller assignments like journals, etc) the student would jump right in to composing the writing and ask for guidance or assistance when needed. I tried to stay as hands off as possible whilst also checking in often and ensuring that what they were doing met the parameters of the assignment. Generally, especially when the students were composing, I would read over their shoulder and talk with them about what they had completed and whether it was in line with the guidelines and expectations or not. More often than not it would be a matter of copyediting while they composed, identifying typos and grammatical issues over their shoulder and alerting them. We also worked heavily on making sure that ideas flowed logically, so if I got confused as they were writing I would let them know so that they could address it as swiftly as possible and without forgetting what they were attempting to say. We would then read over what they had together (usually out loud but not always) and find any issues that might have been overlooked. We would end each session with a discussion of what was left to be completed and how best to go about doing it, as well as expectations for the next session and what we would need to work on then.
Almost all of my student athletes were freshmen, so the bulk of the work we did was from FYC classes. It was interesting to see the kinds of assignments they had (not just because I will be teaching that class next spring), and because the classes were focused on helping students learn how to compose at the college level there was a lot of overlap with the RWC’s mission of “create better writers, not just better writing.” Over the course of this semester, I could see definitive proof that our sessions and these classes did exactly that, and seeing the students using methods I suggested without me even mentioning them again made me feel really good, because I felt like I had definitely helped them to be able to understand themselves as writers and make the process easier on themselves. I also had most of my students agree that revision is the most important part of the writing process, and that they plan to continually revise throughout their college papers, which made me absolutely ecstatic; if I convinced just one of my students that revising is the hallmark of a “good” writer and not what “bad” writers have to do to make their papers better, I will have done what I set out to do.
As far as working in the Digital Studio went, I did a lot of work in helping students compose within a multimodal setting, and I got to help several students learn programs to the point that they weren’t terrified of Photoshop or Wix, so that was great. Most of that work was letting a student stay in the studio as they composed their work and going over to help if there was an issue or if they weren’t sure of how to do something. Most of the students who came in were coming in for either FYC classes or the WEPO classes, both of which encouraged students to compose in multiple genres. Most of the website work I saw was because of students creating portfolios or personal websites, and most of the design work was either because of a multimodal assignment (most were advertisements or magazines). This was a much more relaxed setting, and more often than not we just facilitated and expanded a student’s ability to learn the program and be more comfortable using it.
Throughout the semester I worked with about 15 students per week, and each student almost always had an assignment to work on, with the minimum number of words due being about 200 and the maximum being 2500. I would hazard a guess and say I most likely dealt with about 7,000 words every week, with the range being about 5,000 to 25,000, depending on the week. More often than not, my students and I worked on their bigger assignments, and when they were composing with me during the session they would average about 500 words composed/edited. We would also go through their essays multiple times before turning them in, so there were weeks where I was reading through a 1,500-1,800 word paper during every session almost every day that week. Even when there were fewer assignments and the student only had to compose a journal of 200 words we would go through and edit and revise until the session was over.
My time in the RWC at Florida State has been incredibly gratifying, and has helped guide me to a path for my future. Because of my time in the RWC, it became clear to me that I need to follow my passion and become a teacher, and I have accepted a position at FSU that will enable me to teach, study further, and continue working in the RWC and Digital Studio. I am passionate about writing centers and want to continue working in and conducting research about them, as well as research ELL populations and their needs when it comes to writing/reading. I am excited to see what further improvements I can make to my tutoring style, as well as how my experiences in the center will inform my teaching style.
Word Count:
Home Page/ About Me: 391
Editing Work: 291
-Client Report Forms:
-Average Words Edited: ~5,000-25,000 per week
Letter of Evaluation: 243
Internship Reflection: 2257
Resume: 1,319