Are we really about to go into ANOTHER semester?! Sheesh! How's a person to keep their sanity and motivation for another three months? Let's get into it! This episode has tips for students and tutors so everybody grab your notebooks!
If you would like the transcript to this episode, you can find it on the podcast's website https://www.buzzsprout.com/2097929/ Simply select the desired episode and click the "Transcript" tab beside the Show Notes.
Link to Knock Knock Pads
Appreciate the resources the podcast provides? Consider becoming a monthly subscriber. Choose how much you want to give with pledges starting at $3/month-- cancel anytime. Because everyone deserves writing resources. Make a no-strings-attached pledge here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2097929/supporters/new
Are we really about to go into ANOTHER semester?! Sheesh! How's a person to keep their sanity and motivation for another three months? Let's get into it! This episode has tips for students and tutors so everybody grab your notebooks!
If you would like the transcript to this episode, you can find it on the podcast's website https://www.buzzsprout.com/2097929/ Simply select the desired episode and click the "Transcript" tab beside the Show Notes.
Link to Knock Knock Pads
Appreciate the resources the podcast provides? Consider becoming a monthly subscriber. Choose how much you want to give with pledges starting at $3/month-- cancel anytime. Because everyone deserves writing resources. Make a no-strings-attached pledge here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2097929/supporters/new
[00:00] Intro music
[00:04] Hello, hello! If you’re looking for some real talk about college writing, you’re in the right place. Especially if you’re a college student wanting some easy-to-understand practical tips. Especially if you’re a writing tutor wanting to augment your toolbox or even just refresh old skills. Teachers and myriad other writing and teaching/learning peeps, y’all are certainly welcome to listen in. If anything said is useful, I want you to have it but this podcast is especially for my college students and writing tutors out there.
[00:33] So let’s do the awkward intro thing but quickly! My name is Brittney Threatt. I go by Britt and I am your host. I’m a sixth year doctoral candidate in the Africana Studies department at Brown University. In short, I’m a book nerd. Classroom, my research focuses Black women’s speculative and realistic fiction from 1970s to the contemporary moment. Classroom adjacent, I’ve worked in the university writing center for five years now and this podcast is really aimed at sharing the writing center’s resources.
[01:03] Okay so for this first episode we are going to talk briefly about how to actually keep your sanity and motivation in a new semester. Whether you’re hearing this at the start of the fall semester coming off of summer, in the spring semester coming off winter break, or even going into a summer session, coming back into the grind of school can be daunting. You don’t want to lose the rest and peace you gained during break, but you’re also not trying to fumble the bag in the classroom. Personal peace, professional motivation. How to do both? That’s our topic for the day and I think we can get at it with a good little 4 step plan.Here we go…
[01:40] Music interlude
[01:45] Step one: Balance, baby! You know how in savings they say, "pay yourself first"? As in, put money away in savings and then fulfill your other financial obligations? Balance in academia works the same way, no matter what side you're on! Undergrad, grad, heck even faculty, staff, and admin. Rest yourself first. How are you gonna have room in your schedule to take care of yourself? Do you need a walk every day to feel like yourself? Don’t let that go! Do you need a certain number of hours weekly on anime to be a nice person? Keep that crunchyroll subscription! Are you a yogi? Yoga!
[02:28] Balance isn't about growing up and gritting your teeth to justify cutting your darlings out of your life. Balance is finding your way to being responsible to others while staying accountable, first and foremost, to yourself. So think about it right now. What are three things you need to feel like yourself? For moi, I need a healthy relationship with God, I need a healthy relationship with my family, and I need a connection to my creativity. No matter how busy I get, when I let any of these three things slip, the quality of my work inevitably slips also. What are your three darlings? Make the commitment to keep those things safe this semester. BALANCE, BABY!
[03:14] Step two: Choose 2 skills to practice this semester. I think it is so important-- I know from personal experience-- it is so important to set goals that are attainable, to guard against disappointment. Semesters can seem like they stretch on forever and ever, but in actuality they are only 12-15 weeks. They do not last forever. It is a very fixed amount of time and you simply can't do everything in the world in three months and so it will serve you to choose two things to focus your attention and intention on. To have that get all of your energy for the semester. Choose two things that you really wanna hone over that span of time.
[03:58] So for students, that may be sentence length: are you, are you the main person writing these four line sentences? Do you wanna work on that semester? Okay! Sentence structure: do you wanna have more diversity in your sentence structure? Do you really wanna work on your grammar, do your really work on-- wanna work on developing ideas into papers? Curating a thesis, investing in the pre-writing process, substantial revision?
[04:25] Choose any of those two things or a myriad of other options that you wanna work on which will call you to be reflective in your writing. Will--what do you wanna focus on? What do you feel like always stumps you in your writing? Think about that and then say, "okay, I wanna work on this and this" that semester-- or, you know, this semester that we are at the precipice of right now. Choose those two things.
[04:47] For tutors, that may look like, "I wanna get better at working with multilingual learners" (we’ve got an episode coming to you soon so look our for that). Uh, I may want to manage time better in conferences. I want to sharpen my own familiarity with grammar. I wanna brush up on advising med school apps or graduate school statements of purpose. Whatever. Choose two things, tutors, that you want to work on and we'll talk about how we can fit that into our busy schedules a little bit later in organization. Which leads us to step three:
[05:19] set yourself up with organization. Organization has varying levels of intensity so pick mild, medium, or spicy. Just make sure you can handle the heat. You want to sustain this practice, again, for a 12-15 weeks, which while it is not forever is a long time to do something that you don't feel that you can so make sure whatever you choose for organization, you feel like you can sustain that for the whole semester.
[05:44] So for students, that may look like a Google calendar as a master schedule, right. You can plug in your classes to Google calendar. You can plug in to-do lists as reminders. You can plug in anything to Google calendar and just set it up as "is it an event, is it a reminder, is it a task to do?" Really take advantage of those multiple settings. Um, take advantage of the work hour setting on Google. That will help you with balance, baby! "I don't work after these hours." Choose that and honor that. So if you have Google, it's very easy to make it those things: a master schedule or even a personal assistant just by a click of this or that button.
[06:26] If you're really into tech. if you like getting alerts to your phone or your watch, your computer or whatever, Google calendar can be really helpful if you're juggling a lot because you can also set those reminders and notifications a week out, two weeks out, ten days out, an hour out, fifteen minutes out, so Google calendar can really keep you on top of a busy schedule. That's for those who you want the spicy level of organization. You want the intensity. Um, for those who are like "mm, not too much on all of those notifications." Notebook planner might be more your speed if you wanna go analog, if you do not wanna constantly bom-- wanna be bombarded with notifications. Which, I don't. A notebook planner would be the thing for you and they can get very fancy, so if you wanna bust forty, fifty dollars on a monogrammed one that's super duper beautiful, do that. If you're like "nah, I just need some paper." You know, go to Targét, go to Walmart the clearance aisle. They also have very nice, classic pretty notebooks
[07:26] for the entire calendar year. You could get them, I mean, depending on the day and the clearance section, you can get them for as cheap as maybe seven to fifteen, twenty dollars. And so, if you need all of your things lined up but you do not want all of your things constantly be reminded upon you by Google, a notebook planner would be a really good investment for you. That would be the medium.
[07:50] If you're like "I'm not really for the spicy or the medium. I'm more of a mild person," Knock Knock pads! I love Knock Knock pads. I use Google and the notebook planner-- well, not the notebook planner, never that. I just am not that person, but I have at other times in my life. I-- I use sometimes the spicy but sometimes I really just need analog and I need it to not be an entire calendar year because the reason I've never been able to maintain a notebook planner is because I don't use it everyday. So Knock Knock pads are really great because they are not dated and they're not set up as calendars at all. They are set up as-- well, it depends. So they have ones that for a week. They have ones for a day. They have ones for projects and you can choose the period of time it's cover and I like that flexibility of them. They are so, so super handy and you can just rip the page off when you're done with it and another blank one is just ready and waiting for you whenever next you need it.
[08:45] And so if you are someone who's like "I want organization but I don't want to feel like the resource I'm using is calling me to use it everyday or that the resource is becoming intrusive into my life, Knock Knock pads are really a great use-as-you-want mild option. And of course, as I said, I do sometimes, feel free to mix and match depending on the level of intensity you feel up for for that time. You want to be able to maintain habits for entire semesters but you don't have to use Google all semester. You can use it during midterms or finals and then the rest, maybe you're a Knock Knock pad kind of person. That's totally fine. Mix and match.
[09:21] Um, for tutors, organization really looks like for you, deciding on how much time outside of your tutoring shift you need to feel like your best when you are on the job and then plan accordingly using the same tools that I just listed. Google calendar, notebook planner, Knock Knock pads. How much time do you need to practice these skills that you wanna improve? Thirty minutes a week? An hour? A bit of time each day? Pick your flavor and plug it into your schedule. And the Knock Knock pads, they're super cheap to grab off of Amazon. I have never seen one over fifteen dollars and I can put a link for that in the show notes. If you want it, it t'will be there for you.
[10:00] Music interlude
[10:05] Okay! Number four! Last one already. Number four: find your top five favorite resources. Obviously, I hope you add this podcast to your list. Students, there is nothing like in-person help. If your school has a writing center or some form of writing support, definitely get comfortable utilizing those services. They literally only exist for you! That's one. Two: your professors. No matter how good your writing center or tutors are, you’ll always benefit from some clarification, from some one on one time with your professor or TAs. Please use office hours! If it helps you to have an agenda that you say, "okay, I'ma talk about x, x, and x," if that settles you then do that. It's totally fine but you want to use office hours. You do not want to just be a name to your professor, so help them get to know you and what you're looking for in the course by going to office hours.
[11:01] And I would say, you don't only need to go to office hours when you have a question. I have found some of the best office hour appointments that I've had, both as a TA, as the instructor of my own class, and as a student in undergrad looking back and grad school even now, the best office hours I've had no matter what side of the desk I'm sitting on is when they don't really have a question. They just wanna chat. They wanna rap about an idea that they had. There was something that we said in class that they didn't feel comfortable speaking on in the moment but they've had some time to think and now they want to talk about it more. It's fine. That's totally fine and particularly if your professor puts a great emphasis on participation, that can be another way to help them know that you are engaging and they can still count that towards participation so absolutely-- and even if you're like "that's really the only way that I talk," I would also encourage you to talk to, write to your professor and say, "hey, I'm not super talkative in class. I'm not really comfortable speaking in those sort of arenas
[12:00] I process a little differently. Can I just come to your office hours once a week and talk to you about the material and that count for participation?" Like, you can do that. Definitely ask that. Set that up. Most likely they will not have a problem with that but you won't know until you ask, right? So definitely office hours are a dynamic resource I encourage you to use them, please, please, please. For the final three resources, students, you're gonna actually wanna bookmark these on your computer for easy access.
[12:30] Number one: Purdue OWL's writing lab. It is very well known. In undergrad I used them so much for the technical parts of writing like checking citations. They have a really, really nifty uh page for APA, MLA, Chicago, whatever and then they have examples for each particular format so Purdue OWL is one of the premiere, oft-cited writing resources. Definitely you wanna have them bookmarked on your on your desktop.
[12:58] The second: Vanderbilt University's Writing Studio. It has some really diverse suite of resources all the way from grammar to writing job market materials. And they have a list that is simply handouts from other universities' writing centers. And so Vanderbilt University's Writing Studio is a pretty good one-stop-shop for pretty much anything you need and I'm a super fan of handouts. So definitely bookmark them as well.
[13:26] And then the final one, it is always good to have a favorite citation site. Now, like I said, Purdue OWL has resources on citations but um...I loved Son of a Citation when I was in undergrad. Just fill in the boxes, click which citation style you need. APA, MLA, Chicago and it does the formatting for you. I loved it! It's so simple, so if you're really feeling sort of daunted by citations, don't. Just find a really good citation that you love to do citations for you and that's perfectly fine. Also, if your school has access to Zotero, that's also a top-shelf option so definitely use it if your school has access to it for free for you.
[14:09] I would also say about things like Zotero, it is also good as a sort of rule and a pro-tip, keep your list of citations. The subscription to Zotero may at some end. You don't know if you'll always have access to it, although it's definitely good to have and to use while you do, but keep your citations in a master bibliography that you know you'll have access to forever. So like, in a Word document. Keep your citations in a master bibliography. And that will grow over your time in academia, whether you just have it for undergrad, if you go to masters, grad school, whatever. It's good to have that and if you can add a couple of sentences of annotation to each entry, you will thank yourself months or even years later when you have a vague memory of something that went something like x, y, z, you can barely remember it.
[14:58] Going back through that annotated master bibliography can give you the citation and the main ideas of that argument. I'm telling y'all it has saved my tushy multiple times and that goes back to setting yourself up for success with organization.
[15:12] Music interlude
[15:15] So tutors, for resources number one: make a mentor out of a staff member. What were those two skills that you chose, that you really wanted to to sharpen this semester? Who on your center's staff is an expert in that skill? Get on up to 'em! Do lunch, have meetings, solicit readings. Find someone who can help you and walk alongside them. Learn what they know. It's a great resource to grow your own skill and it's also just a great networking opportunity for someone to be able to speak to your growth and so definitely use that human resource if you can find it in your writing center or center of teaching and learning. Wherever you're doing your work, try to find someone. Try to find a human resource.
[15:58] Speaking of human resources, giving you readings. Tutors, you also want to start a dedicated, annotated master bibliography for your writing center readings, for your teaching and learning readings, for your pedagogy readings, for your skill readings, handouts, all of that. Especially if you're interested in going into a job at a writing center or teaching and learning center, I’ve heard this from multiple people in multiple centers: knowing the names of the people in that field and being able to call upon their contributions will be really important to show that you know your stuff– especially if your degree is not in Rhet Comp, is not in Rhetorics or Composition. That will show that "no, my degree is not in it, but I am trained in this and I am literate, articulate, comfortable, proficient in this field to talk about it and to pull upon these resources for students," right. You wanna be able to show that versatility and that proficiency.
[16:53] The second: Ohio University's Graduate Writing & Research Center has some great role play videos on working with multilingual learners. So I would definitely bookmark that as a resource just off the bat. And then finally, Purdue OWL and Vandy's writing center are also great writing centers to pull from but certainly, tutors, find the peer centers you like the best and top 5 them for future reference!
[17:18] Music interlude
[17:23] And...there we have it! Some tips for keeping your sanity and motivation in a new semester. It went something like step one: balance, baby! Step two: choose two skills to practice this semester. Step three: set yourself with organization. Step four: find your top five favorite resources. I thought it would be good to start out with some prep and affirmation for this first episode. Now, next episode is gonna be a doozy! Tutors, are you hearing a lot of talk about antiracist writing instruction? Students, do you want to learn how to advocate for your right to your own language in the classroom? Next episode we are opening those cans of worms and I hope it makes y’all wanna go fishing.
[18:06] I’m excited to hop right into this first season on College Writing, Actually and I really hope it gives you some of what you need. The podcast does have a Twitter. It’s simply College Writing, Actually with the handle @realcollegecomp so get at me there if you have questions you hope to hear addressed. I’m wishing us all a lot of growth together. For now, I’m out. Y’all write on.