the rest of the week 9/10 readings & FAILURE

There were 4 articles to read for weeks 9 & 10 and I blogged extensively on the Sherwood article and the Smith article but I have yet to write anything about the "Redneck" article or the "Ethics" article so I just want to write a few brief points about the two....Firstly, I think the "Redneck" article is pretty self-explanatory and just further illustrates the importance of a writing tutor or consultant role to help a student with clarifying their ideas not proving them with so-called "better" ideas. I can see this being an issue for me in the future because I like to generate ideas more than I like to actually write so if I'm working with someone who has to do the writing I need to be conscientious about not just giving someone my ideas even though I'm not doing the writing. (Not sure if that made any sense as I wrote it.) Secondly, the article about ethics and the "non-traditional" student took a surprisingly different approach to the Smith article about the "non-traditional student. To be honest, at first I was confused about the main argument of the article but after some extensive class discussion, I have a much better grasp on the various issues brought up by the article including the issue between ethics of assumptions/practice/mission, as well as the traditional vs. non-traditional student, working with younger vs. older students, power distribution, ect., ect., ect. In my opinion the bottom line, the whole idea of the personality vs. situation controversy plays a much more fundamental role than even the article emphasized. In other words, at times the situation can overpower the personality of the consultant whereas other times, the personality of the consultant can overpower the situation. (Again, not sure if this is making any sense to anyone but me.)

On to the topic of FAILURE:
I definitely agree that failure can breed better understanding and stronger learning. For example, I did terribly academically 1st semester of college but that failure had enabled me to learning better study skills, be more motivated in my school work, as raise my GPA.
That said, I capitalized the word failure because I think the word itself has a lot of negative attribution and is seen as passive, when it can indeed be an active ingredient to success.