Survival Summary

The Rocky Mountain Peer Tutoring Conference this past weekend in Cedar City was a big success. More specifically, my presentation went beautifully. Ten people came to hear my presentation (which is a perfect number really, 7 is about the average though the woman before me only had 3 audience members). My presentation was about my paper entitled "Being the Bridge: The Ripple Effect in Confronting Issues of Race, Culture, and Writing." The paper started as a literature review of the Fall 2007 issue of Praxis discussing Diversity in the Writing Center. From that I added information from Victor Villanueva's "Rhetorics of Racism" (CCCC Diversity Blog). I spent most of my time discussing racism and my main point was that in the writing center, consultants have a unique opportunity to interact with people from many backgrounds, races, cultures, and academic departments. Therefore, we hear many points of view so we need to share those points of view elsewhere in the university to help give students voices who might not have them in many university settings.

Practicing for my presentation, my mouth would go so dry I could barely talk and my hands would shake, but when I actually got up there to present I wasn't nervous at all and did not suffer from those symptoms.

I left Friday morning, presented on Saturday morning, got home Saturday night, studied and went to church on Sunday, and had a midterm this morning. Tonight I need to write a paper and then for the rest of the week I need to study for another midterm.

I am very excited for Spring Break next week!