After Post NOTES
February 2020
“I Make Noise” was my first written response to a Writing Studio staff assignment. Before Practicum (our monthly meetings), all professional and peer tutors read several texts addressing topics we are focusing on within the semester. We are then given a prompt to answer on the staff blog.
For this particular piece, we read Beth Boquet’s “Noise from the Writing Center” and discussed how we make noise in the FIT Writing Studio. My group (a team of tutors at Practicum), deduced that noise is finding difference in repetition. This noise, although sometimes seeming chaotic, is sometimes necessary in moving forward with a pattern one might want to or need to get out of.
I MAKE NOISE
I originally meant to observe what, due to unexpected circumstances, became my first tutoring session. The student mixed up his appointment time with Monet (another tutor) and came in to the Writing Studio early. She had another session at this time, but the student said he couldn’t come back later. I had introduced myself and started talking with him before Monet could come over, so I was a convenient alternative. The student had been warned that this would be my first session, but he insisted it was cool. Although it was my first session and the real noise I made could only be heard in the vicinity of our two chairs, perhaps I whispered some figurative noise.
Before I read the assignment guidelines I asked the student to explain it so that my own perspective would not be skewed (I was also in shock). I’ve noticed that during my Japanese listening quizzes whichever word I read first is the word I am more likely to hear, even if that is not the correct answer. So before I attempt to understand anything myself, I want to know what he thinks because he’s been working on it in the class. The student’s assignment was to read an article, summarize it, and express his thoughts. He had to write the brief essay in one hour during class, and brought in the graded essay to the Writing Studio, drenched in red ink, along with a long list of grading symbols and meanings. I instantly suggested just starting over, so we did.
I think starting over, is noise. We could have gone over every single mark and explain why each one is a mistake. But that is repetitive, and I believe that this kind of repetition is for muscle memory, not understanding rules of writing. In martial arts, we repeat the same routines hundreds of time, so that we don’t even have to think about what we are doing. However, writing requires thinking, and although some administrations and institutions strive to standardize writing, real writing and understanding is personal. The professor’s long list of corrections is a somewhat robotic attempt to make all student writing the same.
When the student and I started over, he was able to think through what he wanted to say in a stress-free setting. When he thought out loud, I could tell his thinking process was unlike that of the professor. In fact, most of his errors while writing were due to feeling rushed. I learned he only had an hour to write in class. Once he actually took the time (more like had the time) to notice he didn’t write what he meant (maybe there was an error with tense or sentence structure), he could fix it for the most part on his own. I think, or hope, that when he lives through his entire thought process in our session, he will be more likely to understand the writing process in another setting.
Of course, I understand that he has many other stressful things on his mind as a Menswear BFA student (a energy-absorbing major). But I hope I helped him be a little more aware when he chooses writing to communicate his thoughts.