You Do the Math

It started in seventh grade: the breakdown of any mathematical understanding I had acquired over the previous twelve years of my life. I took my graded math paper up to the teacher's desk and asked for help with one of many problems she had marked.

"I didn't understand how to do this problem," I told her.

"An excuse is a dressed up lie!" she replied. I retreated in confusion, but this time the problem was my limited understanding of language rather than math. However, there ended any help I might have asked for or been given. Unfortunately, there did not end the requirement that I take math classes.

I spent the next six years watching math instructors work problems on chalk boards. Sometimes, if I were really desperate, I would watch a friend work a math problem on a piece of paper. I always watched. "Here," someone would say, "this is how you do it." Numbers would move in patterns over the page, interspersed with symbols. "There. That's the answer. That's how you do it," my tutor would proclaim.

I am a tutor now. I listen to the students as they explain to me where they are in their writing, where they want to go, how they might get there. I offer suggestions. I point to words that might be confusing, sentence structures that might mislead. I tell them how their writing creates meaning or obscures it. I repeat what I've read in their papers, tell them what I expect next as a reader. Sometimes, I write on their papers. Sometimes, I draw a line from an antecedent to a pronoun.

I've never opened my lap top and said, "Here, this is how you do it." I've never constructed a thesis for my next paper while they look on. It might help me, but it would be pointless for the student.

When I started in the writing center, I had to force myself to put down my pencil. It all looked so easy to me. I wanted to say, "Here, let me fix your paper." I'm glad I never did. The next time I am tempted to re-write even a sentence for a student, I think I will remember the hundreds of math problems I saw worked out on paper and how very little I learned.

How Much Money Do I Have to Make?

After five years overseas, I am now firmly planted in the United States. I'm old enough to realize that even making that statement means I should probably renew my passport, but for now I'm going to appreciate waking up in one of the world's societies that actually pays graduate students to talk about literature.


However, even before my recent return to formal studies, I spent many years talking about literature, sometimes to people who actually listened, with no compensation at all.


Is my opinion about literature worth more now that I am paid a monthly stipend? Am I worth more?


Yesterday, a student firmly expressed that a literary character discussed in his paper was no one, the member of no economic class, because she did not pursue economic gain when the opportunity arose. Although she was married to a prosperous farmer, had no financial need, and in no way appeared deficient in her role as the primary keeper of a household, this student maintained, "She didn't do anything!" I pressed for an explanation, and he clarified that she didn't make any money. "All she does is stay in that garden!" he said. I answered, "Yes, and probably cooks her husband's dinner and washes his shirts." But unaware, the student gleefully said, "Exactly! She doesn't do anything."


I was a military wife for seventeen years. When my army spouse and I divorced, he had a similar attitude. He was near eligibility for retirement and he planned to take his army check with him. "It's my money!" he said. "I earned it. You didn't do anything." I thought back to all the things I didn't do. Granted, I was never shot at, but then my spouse wasn't either (think "cold war.") However, I moved eleven times in sixteen years. I followed the same strident post regulations that the service members did. I led social gatherings, performed good-will duties to make a U.S. mililtary presence more palatable to a foreign community, and looked over my shoulder while I lived O-CONUS for portions of both gulf wars.

However, unlike my interaction with the student writer yesterday, I didn't argue with my ex-husband. I didn't have to. By federal law I receive half of the portion of his retirement check earned while we were married. The money comes directly from the U. S. government in acknowledgment of all those things I didn't do.

The First Step

Once a year, my husband starts asking about medical receipts, W-2 forms, and which of our six children we'll be claiming when we file our taxes. Gathering information for the accountant is sometimes tedious, but I've found it provides an interesting review of the year.



The most surprising data I collected this year concerned my mileage to and from work in the writing center. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it. The number was so big that I decided my husband might be right. My car might not last until the completion of my degree. Perhaps I should pay more attention when he stops at car lots. The car we look at might be the one I'm driving next fall or next spring.



My mind was still considering the odometer reading on my car when I got to the writing center earlier this week. I overheard a graduate assistant talking about a student who has already used all his absences for the semester. I remembered my years as a GTA at the University of Alabama and at KU. I heard many excuses and reasons why a student who signed up for an 8 o'clock class couldn't consistently wake up to an alarm, walk across campus, and stay awake for an hour.



I drove 10,000 miles last semester in my quest for an education. I didn't miss a single class. I came on a day I had no class to turn in a paper. I kept the committment I made to myself and fulfilled the requirements of the courses I took.



One day when I teach again and hear pleas for leniency in enforcing class attendance policies, I think I will remember my semester of 10,000 miles.

How Much Thread Can I Share Before I Quit Spinning?

Recently, I joined several colleagues for a day of listening, talking, and thinking about writing. We were privileged to hear an outstanding researcher offer her insights and impressions of the more recent trends in student composition. Many things she said were noteworthy. I jotted quotes on my session program, I made comments on the handout, and I thought about using the inside cover of a publisher's copy of "They Say, I Say." It never came to that, although it would have been ironic if it had.

One of the more thought-provoking comments that our speaker made was that students growing up in the age of the internet are much more likely to see texts--any texts, written, spoken, sung--as part of a great commons of intellectual thought to be added to and borrowed from at will with little, if any, credit given to sources.

She used the metaphor of a weaver as he takes a little of this material and a little of that to weave a fabric of story or thought together. In the students' minds, the finished product belongs to no one and everyone.

It all sounded so warm somehow, all that wool, one big blanket, covering so many people. Then I remembered the last time the temperature dropped unexpectedly overnight. A blanket that was always shared was suddenly spoken of over breakfast with copious personal pronouns.

And I thought about the days of Chaucer, when writers wrote, and printers, storytellers, and book sellers reaped the profits.

As a writer of both fiction and critical essays, I began to wonder how many words I would be willing to share before I started using personal pronouns to describe my writing, backed up with copyright certificates from the United States Government.

When writers began to receive just compensation for their efforts and toils, all of us were rewarded with more stories, more entertainment, and more world-changing thought. If the reverse happens, if music downloads are free and photographs can be reproduced with no regard for ownership, I'll still tell my stories. But I might not write them down.

Your Story

Over the Christmas break, one of my children sat me down in front of a DVD of The Office. She was filling in time otherwise spent in front of fresh television episodes, no longer available with the writers on strike. This particular story line involved a visit to a graduate class where the demise of service orientated businesses was predicted in the face of warehouse bulk pricing. The episode ends with an indignant office manager of a small company saying something to the effect that business is people, and people will never go out of business.

I enjoyed the show and wondered when a new episode would air. I asked my newspaper editor husband. He's in charge of current affairs in our household, while I grapple with concepts and literature that prevailed a hundred years or more ago. After hearing all about the writers' strike, I started thinking.

As a writing tutor and once and future composition teacher, I have heard many comments concerning the effect of television, film, and cell phones on student writing. Someone, somewhere, is always ready to predict the demise of writing, deploring technological advancements and the lessening need for written communication. It took me a few minutes, but I realized that the writers' strike is just one more proof that those predictions won't come true. Although some movies I have seen appeared to have no writer behind whatever passed for a script, I realized that writing was behind all the story lines on all film screens, television shows, and laugh-out-loud commercials. I realized that writing is first and foremost telling a story. And stories, if distributed to the masses, will always need writers.

People love stories, I love stories, and everyone I've met has one. So, write your story. I'd love to read it. What better time? There's nothing new on TV anyway.

The MTSU Writing Center Blog

Sometimes in the midst of talking about writing, thinking about writing, and teaching about writing, we never get around to actually writing. Remember passing notes in class? A good series of notes written across a scrap piece of notebook paper could always make the most boring class pass quickly. During my one year of teaching high school English (which I fondly remember in terms I can't use here), I threatened to post student notes on the bulletin board so we could all enjoy them. I always knew which students to watch for passing notes; they were the ones with the brightest eyes, the most alert faces, the straightest body posture. Everything about their appearances showed me they were in a state of high alert. Passing notes was an exhilarating experience indeed. And writing notes was second to receiving them. The thrill of seeing the corner of the folded paper pushed ever so slightly in one's direction promised endless possibilities. What would it say? What would it mean? Would we get caught?

If you've found this post, you know MTSU's writing center has changed the web address of its blog. We hope the format on blogger.com is easy to use and gives you a venue for all your note passing needs. Go ahead! Revisit the thrill of having your say while the boring world continues on its course. As I've heard many students protest, "It's just a note." So write one; perhaps you'll get caught!