My Consultation

It all began with going to my first Chemistry class on Tuesday- after getting four people up and dressed, lunches packed, off to school, the bus stop, plucking my eyebrows, and driving 30 minutes in the wrong direction to take the cutest terrorist to daycare. Then another 45 minute drive to school in which I parked at the lower lot to catch the gold shuttle bus to the Nat Sci building.

While riding the shuttle up the hill I called The Writing Center and made an appointment with the writing center up at Gruehning, that wasn't hard at all, really it wasn't. I really need to finish this English class before all the other Chemistry and Biology homework starts to waterfall into my life so when I heard that there was no lab for Tuesday, I dropped in unannounced to The Writing Center disregarding my appointment the next day. I really really really want English to be over at this point and am willing to buy more coffee to keep myself at it.

I hiked up 5 flights of stairs, figuring I can lose some calories too, to the meet three lonely expert English persons suffering from lack of activity. School JUST started, I am sure they were not expecting someone with a nearly completed research paper to walk in the first day of school. They were nearly fighting over me, well kinda. Ian C. won. This is cool, someone you can hand your assignment over to, to read over, and hand it back and say "nice"...NOT!!

Ian asked me what my assignment was, what type of writing project, what did I think I needed the most help with. Then he began reading while I found the water fountain. I really hiked 5 flights of stairs. He read half and then we began to discuss the correct way to make web citations. We had a discussion with a few other English expert fellows that were consulted because Ian wanted pro backup. I hated to disturb their intellectual dialogue on the 80's transformers, storm and sunbot known to have special UV powers but they were ecstatic to join the consultation. We all learned how to properly make unpaginated web references in a research paper. Cool.

The next part was even better because that previous part, I knew for sure that stuff was wrong. After reading half the paper and complementing my research and two pages of citations, Ian was a little unclear on some of my points, even though I pointed them out to him. He gave me some really good ideas on how to make my points stronger, how to leave one part and go onto the next part stronger. Like making a big entrance everytime someone comes in the door. That was my analogy not his.

We worked on transitions and where I needed more of them. I told him that this was my suckiest part and he disagreed and said that this was the time to work on this part. He said writing is a process and I am still in the process of creating the research paper. (Really without the consultation I was ready to just send it in!) I have put in lots of time on this project, sometimes with tears, sometimes with bursts of tantrums-my husband will celebrate for sure when English 111 is over- and mostly with a lack of sleep.

The last part. Ian suggested that I change up the introduction and gave me reasons why which I will not say here in my blog. It sounded reasonable to me. I will try it.....tomorrow! Rewriting, fine tuning, and editing will make tomorrow a busy day and a great day to end chapter 14.

For any writing assignment due, before it is due, go see Ian or some other unbusy English person expert at UAF on the 8th floor of the Gruening Building for some advice. They are really helpful and nice even when you put yourself down.

Now go eat some ice cream! I know that ice cream has nothing to do with the blog and neither does the fact that all those stairs that I hiked didn't help get me to 10,000 steps on Tuesday.