Is it just me, or does everything come in 3s?

Lately I've felt as though things have been coming my way in sets of three... and the same goes for the three readings for week 3!

First off for the readings was The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors by Leigh Ryan and Lisa Simmerelli. It was an easy guide to follow and I read about the stages of the writing process (stuff I know by now but it isn't bad to review) which include fundamentals of prewriting, writing, and revision. The text goes into more detail but there is no point in relaying that information in this post. Chapter 3 of The Bedford Guide was about the tutoring session itself. Having used the Writing Center a lot my freshman year, I found it interesting to read about the other side. When the authors list *three* effective tools for tutors to consider, I found myself correlating the first and third rules together, which were "active listening" and "wait time to allow a writer time to think". To me this is exactly why I find the writing center useful--because it's somewhere I can go to just simply talk to myself and think to myself, in the given presence of an expert

I found the first chapter of Keith Hjortshoj's The Transition to College Writing a bit on the degrading side. I mean he asks, "Are you prepared for college?". Well chances are, if you have this book in hand, you're beyond the realization that you may or may not be ready to handle the tasks of higher-level education. I had a difficult first semester here at Richmond but I quickly learned to adjust to the quick academic pace and nothing that this author points out would have helped me. I also sort of found his idea with the "mythical college" and "mythical high school" to be on the irrelevant side of the spectrum. Chapter 4 of Hjortshoj text provides similar aspects to the writing process found in The Bedford Guide. In chapter 6 of The Transition to College Writing, Hjortshoj uses "footstool essay" as an analogy for the typical 5 paragraph essay, with an introduction, 3 body paragraphs, and a conclusion. It's not just this author that is doing so, but many people criticize a 5 paragraph form. My opinion is that the number of paragraphs doesn't even matter. Shouldn't it be about the value of the writing, strength of the argument, and quality of the final product?

Finally, we were to a small section from The St. Martin's Sourcebook for Writing Tutors by Christina Murphy and Steve Sherwood. I don't have much to say about his reading except to note the fact that the authors loveeee this idea about 'collaboration'. If executed appropriately, I agree with their notion that collaboration has an overflowing amount of positive outcomes.

Happy Monday!