A much needed read

"Apprenticed to Failure: Learning from the Students We Can't Help" by Steve Sherwood was an article that it was about time to read. I would say that this reading differed from other readings in the sense that it wan't about arguing a point so much as about conveying a powerful message. It was written in easy-to-read and comforting tone as it contained a reassuming message about the fear of failure. It was nice to read because this 'fear' that Sherwood elaborates upon does indeed cross my mind because I would by no means consider myself as having some sort of 'writing expert' status and I do feel the day I get handed a paper above my level of comprehension. A question I think we all ought to consider is whether or not good writers necessarily make for good writing consultants?

Sherwood starts the article by recalling a past experience working with a student who had learning disabilities and requested to tape record the session for later use. Sherwood reveals that this ended up disastrous and the tape recorder became an "unpredictable interruption". This makes me think about shadowing writing consultations. Keeping in mind that the student coming into the Writing Center is never aware ahead of time that a thrid-party will be sitting there observing, perhaps the shadow's presence serves as an "unpredictable interruption" to the student.

Sherwood goes on to discuss how we should view failure in a positive light, stating that "failure toughens us" and is "a key to our growth". (On a side note, I think another reason I liked this article is because he often references psychologists and I am currently taking a psychology class so I can easily related to the connections he's talking about.) Anyway, back on subject--Sherwood makes the classic argument that much of our fear of success comes from grades. We've had lots of discussion on grades in class and I think it can continue to be an endless conservation but nevertheless it is important to note the influence that the entire notion of grades has on us as students and furthermore, as writers.

Sherwood goes on to suggest some rather interesting approaches to "cope with the extreme fear of failure" and among them I really liked the idea of "lower[ing] the stakes for writing". As the article claims (and as I agree), this tactic can allow for students to be more expressive if there is less pressure and thus less fear to fail. That said, it's a great idea but I think traditional boundaries pre-established in the academic setting are a little hard to bend.