Saturday, December 4, 2010
Neeeeervous
As the end of the course draws to a close and the second semester looms in front of me, I am beginning to realize I will soon be a writing consultant. Writers will look to me for help and while I am more than confident in my abilities; nevertheless I am apprehensive about certain things. During my last consultation I was presented, for the first time, with APA format. I have never had to write a paper in that format so far, so when my tutor pointed out the writer may want to check the citations I was taken aback. What if I had been consulting and missed this error? What if the writer did not check it either and decided to submit the paper without checking if the citations were correct? This may seem minute to some and maybe I am paranoid, but if you cite a source wrong that could essentially be seen as plagiarism. Maybe I am just overwhelmed by the upcoming week of finals but I a would be lying if I said I was not a little nervous to be one on one with the writers. Either way I am more than excited.
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One thing that I am looking forward about being a writing consultant is that I think I will learn a lot. I have never used APA format either, but it this give me a good opportunity to pull up some literature on it find out!
ReplyDeleteHonestly, we are all worried about being consultants. But you need to remember...WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS and we can make mistakes. Also, we are just students so it would be impossible for us to be the 'all knowing' about everything having to deal with writing. Hence the term 'student' and not teacher. I try to think of myself being a consultant more like someone to get a second opinion from, someone to bounce ideas off of, and someone to just have a different perspective.
ReplyDeleteI think we are all a bit nervous about our first real consultations with students. I think as long as we take a breath, get a cup of coffee, and admit that we are beginners everything will be fine.
ReplyDeleteI never thought of that citation thing... It's definitely one of my least favorites. However, one of the things we could do is to point the writer at the proper resources or give them material with citation instructions. I think it's not a big deal to acknowledge that we can't possibly know every citation format in the world.
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