Visual Rhetoric...beyond the grave

We'll be talking about visual rhetoric in a few weeks, discussing such things as how to help students make posters, PowerPoints, webpages, or handouts that look professional and get the right message across. So I actually did just now snicker out loud when I saw this fake news image from The Onion, captioned "Wrong Font Chosen for Gravestone":

How Can a Man Clam?

I found this quote today in an article by Henry Lous Gates Jr. that I was assigned to read for Methods of Critical Analysis, and I thought it was particularly appropriate since we'll be talking about oral presentations next week. Bear with me, it's a bit long...(he is talking about an incident when he was giving a talk to a college honors seminar on Frederick Douglass)

"Everything was neatly schematized, formalized, analyzed; this was my Sunday-best structuralism: crisp white shirt and shiny black shoes. And it wasn't playing. If you've seen an audience glaze over, this was double glazing. Bravely, I finished my talk and, of course, asked for questions. 'Yeah, brother,' said a young man in the very back of the room, breaking the silence that ensued, 'all we want to know is, was Booker T. Washington an Uncle Tom or not?'
The funny thing is, this happens to be an interesting question, a lot more interesting than my talk was. It raised all the big issues about the politics of style, about what it means to speak for another, about how to distinguish between canny subversion and simple co-optation-- who was manipulating whom? And while I didn't exactly appreciate it at the time, the exchange did draw my attention, a little rudely perhaps, to the yawning chasm between our critical discourse and the traditions they discourse upon."

Okay, so if anyone is still with me after that mouthful...I just think that it is a great example of someone not taking their audience into account. This man felt very prepared, had everything organized and ready, but never thought about how the people actually listening to his speech would feel about it. Lesson learned.

Mentoring Expectations from Students

As an FYS mentor I have had students come to me for help often and it is interesting to observe the way I approach their needs. I have noticed that I tend to start out as a minimalist because I ask my students what I can help them with and what their concerns are about the paper or assignment. Often they are able to tell me, but they have no idea how to approach their concerns. This is when I tend to become more directive or we would both sit there in silence. It can sometimes be frustrating when you do not want to tell the student exactly what to do, but they are not responding to your questions or I have had a student actually say "ok well I don't know, what do you think I should write here". It seems that most students expect mentors to be directive and to tell them exactly how to perfect their papers. It is difficult for me to let them learn on their own because I do know exactly how to fix their papers since I took the FYS last year, but I am there to guide them and not tell them exactly what to do. They will not learn this way. It is difficult because most students expect the answers and not a lesson.

Lonely Mentor

I’ve now been an FYS mentor for four weeks and NO ONE has come to see me yet! Why don’t people want help with their papers? Do they think it will take to much time or that it will be embarrassing?

When we role played in class today, being the tutor and the tutee, it was much easier to play the role of the tutee. The example paper would have been MUCH better if someone –ANYONE- had read it over. I wish I could assure all first years that writing mentors are harmless and can definitely help. For the first years that I am mentoring, I wish I could go to their class and tell them that it is easy to come and get help. Unfortunately, I have class during their FYS meeting time, so I guess I just have to sit in the library and wait for them to come to me on their own.