One Step At A Time September 26, 2013

Good morning, UCWbLers and other writing-loving friends! Now that the autumn quarter is in full swing, we asked one of our new UCWbL writing tutors and graduate assistants, Marcela D., to write a little about her experience so far with the UCWbL!

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First I was afraid, I was petrified, I thought I’d never understand what the UCWbL’s all about, the amount of things that it involves and how many people it helps through such different paths.

It was an overwhelming and full of excitement beginning indeed. I have never been a tutor, until now, except for teaching my daughter, which I never considered as a tutoring task but one of my maternal duties, so you can imagine how I felt as I began to dive into the UCWbL’s mission and believes.

Thankfully, now that I have been able to see below the surface and start to put into practice all the things we’ve been studying and reading, my fears are changing into joy, not only because I finally understood it, but also because it is an amazing experience to collaborate and work together with all kinds of writers in all kinds of writing projects.

One of the things I’m very happy about is the continued learning opportunity this represents, not only for writers, but also for tutors. Each meeting is a collaborative job between both of them, where an interchange of knowledge takes place.

The fact that the tutoring sessions are held in such a friendly environment helps the writers feel comfortable and open to suggestions, but at the same time invites them to come up with their own conclusions and, therefore, leads them to trust their writing process.

At the same time, the tutor learns that every writer is different, although most of their concerns might be the same, and this will improve its teaching skills as he would have to find the best way to reach out for each particular writer so they both find the path to improve not only the writing task in front of them, but the writer skills too.

Over these couple of weeks as a new UCWbLer I have found myself submerged in a lot of information and I can say that I’m very impressed about how well organized and practical everything is, but I’m even more impressed about all the good nature people I have found. It’s not easy to find people willing to guide you in every step of the road and even wait for you while you tie your shoes or need to make a pause to take some air.

The Art of Revision October 17, 2012

I am a writer. I write — and up until last year, I absolutely, under no circumstances, did not re-write.

Making Money Through Writing: Fact or Fiction? October 16, 2012

For a while now I have been asking myself how I can make a career out of my writing. My immediate answer would be to write novels and short stories. However, I am not naive enough to think that that will be able to keep a roof over my head and food in the fridge, not to mention in my tummy, without some other means of supporting myself. So what other skills have I learned over the last four years that will allow me to get a job that I will not absolutely hate but still allow me to write?

The Unpaid Internship – Cruel and Unusual or Necessary Evil?

Unfairness, thy name is unpaid internship. During one conversation appointment this week, I fell into something of a difficulty: having to explain why I had done so many unpaid internships. My conversation partner, a finance graduate student, had already had a paid internship with an ample (if not exactly generous) stipend, and thought it was strange when I said I’d never had a paid internship. In the past four years, I’ve worked for several companies in several roles, but always unpaid and always with a paying retail or office job on the side so I wouldn’t run my bank account into the ground. I’ve spoken with other students in humanities or writing programs over the past few years and many of them reported similar experiences (with the exception of those who only did unpaid internships and let the budgetary chips fall where they may). I’m willing to bet that most of our readers in LA&S can relate, and most science or business students are thinking I’m crazy for accepting unpaid work. For me, the question becomes: why does the unpaid internship seem to be only the plague of humanities or writing-based fields? Does it actually do anything, other than drain our bank accounts? And what can we do to change it?

Blogging on Blogging October 15, 2012

Blogs, blogging and bloggers all have a certain stigma attached to them. From “bored housewives” to “creepy internet stalkers”, the blog world usually gets a bad reputation. And as a writer of not only this blog, but my own NBA one, I could not be more confused.

First off, because of the vast flexibility within the domain, I find it difficult to even try and categorize blogging. A blogger could be anyone from a fifth grade student to a CEO to a professional athlete to my grandmother. Posts are written on millions of different topics, even varying within one website alone. And blogs could appear on mediums from online publications, to newspapers, to social media sites and beyond.

But there is one thing that all blogs embody: writing.

Mark Twain’s Love/Hate Relationships October 2, 2012

… with his typewriter.  Yes, it turns out the Twain-man couldn’t quite untangle his feelings about the revolutionary device.  Mr. Clemens certainly made history when he wrote Tom Sawyer: it was the first-ever typed manuscript to be submitted for publication.  But though he loved his typewriter, he couldn’t bring himself to offer a public endorsement for Remington, the manufacturer, as we see in this letter.

Portrait of the Tutor as an Artist

As tutors we come into contact with dozens of essays, projects and presentations every week, through our writers. As we comment on and nudge along in our tutorials, we have a sense of aiding a writer in their work – but what about our work? Is our impact on the paper or Powerpoint more than just that of a nursemaid? I don’t know that most of us would call ourselves “authors” after working with others’ writing, but is tutoring in itself a creative act?

The Only Idiom Database You’ll Ever Need September 26, 2012

After several conversation appointments where I was asked about the origin of common phrases, I had to ask: what does it mean to “scream bloody murder”? What is a “sight for sore eyes” and when did we start saying “sour grapes”? Thankfully, a quick Google search turned up the The Phrase Finder. This database is an invaluable resource for appointments and an enjoyable look at weird phrases’ origins for the interested reader.

Fear of Papers: A Tutor Coming Out September 25, 2012

Working at the writing center, it is usually assumed that you love to write papers. I am testifying today, however, that this is not always the case.

Alif… Baa… Taa: A Language and Writing Odyssey in Amman September 21, 2012

The UCWbL’s Peter D. is studying in Jordan this semester.  Tune in here for this exciting series on language, learning, and culture.

I scrambled to explain to my O’Hare security-line neighbor, a businessman from Amman, why I would be studying intensive Classical Arabic for the semester.