Writing Center Tutors, Unite!

80+ Writing Center Tutors, 18 different session topics, 9 Colleges & High Schools present, 1 common goal. Welcome to the Mid-Atlantic Writing Centers Association Mini Regional Meeting (MAWCAMRM! Hm let's not use that acronym.) Yesterday I, along with Ms. Pizzazz and 10 other Edison Writing Center (EWC) tutors went to the University of Maryland for the Regional Meeting for a day full of intellectual conversation, amazingly made sandwiches and bipolar weather.

UMD's Writing Center Plaque!

The University of Maryland (UMD) was less than an hour away and the EWC gang got there before 9. We got coffee (which I passed) and bagels for breakfast and a little tour of the UMD's Writing Center. As you can see theirs is just a little bit more professional than our high school one with comfy chairs and Mac computers to work on (plus I heard they even get paid!) After that all of us tutors were shepherded into a big room where the UMD's Writing Center Director talked about what a pleasure it was to have us and that the high school tutors are starting at such a young age. Then our own Writing Center Director, Ms. Pizzazz, got up and spoke a little about how the day would go. Below you can see all of us tutors from the EWCin the first two rows:

After the little introduction was over we were broken up and each tutor had three different 45 minute sessions about a certain topic. For example my first session was how to deal with (in a good way)/tutor English as a Second Language (ESL) writers. This was my favorite session out of all three because there were so many bright tutors with a lot of insightful things to say. It was more of a discussion than having the facilitators (the people who were sort of in charge that everything went smoothly and asked questions for discussion) just tell us how to tutor ESL writers. I won't bore you with the details but I learned a lot of new tips and tricks (my favorite quote said during the discussion was "fake it until you make it!") and supplied some of my own tips from my own experiences with ESL writers. The second and third were good, Enrichment Tutoring (what to do when your "tutee" already has a great paper) and Tutoring Unfamiliar Content. There were also other sessions that I would have loved to go to like: Hands on Tutoring, Uncomfortrable Topics/Language or Dealing With Students That Are Required To Come.

After that we had lunch were a fellow tutor, Sarah, kept on fawning over how great I made my sandwich (that was what we were fed). She even took pictures! When lunch was over we once again filed into a room and saw other schools social media stuff like youtube videos, slogans, blogs (btw click on the link and go watch our Billy Mays EWC infomercial!) In addition to our amazingly punny slogan (do the write thing and there's more than one write way) I also really liked "yeah, write". We then proceeded to take group pictures of us outside.

Notice all our different EWC apparel!

EWC Tutors got SWAG!!

Then came the a tour of the UMD which I was looking forward to since this would be college visit number 2 for me and in less than one month! I'll let the pictures speak for themselves (along with captions!)

UMD was a little but more modern than UVA's colonial architecture yet still very pleasant

Student Union Builiding with a food-court, it was like a mini mall!

A plaza where demonstrations are sometimes held, hmm those clouds look ominous...

 They had a farm which I thought was hilarious! Anyways soon after we all "oooo"ed and "ahhh"ed about the horses it suddenly started HAILING ON US. AT first we were all like "hmm this is certainly random" and then it all fell down in torrents and we were like "AGH!!!" For those of you that have never been hailed on let me tell you on thing. It hurts! and these weren't just little pieces of ice, no, these were freaking small marble sized rocks that were pounding into our bodies!

Here we are giggling about the situation. Little did we know...

Eek! Run for cover!

After a while it turned into rain. Even wet the EWC has swag!

The UMD Terrapins! (aka their little turtle mascots)

The school lawn quadrangle, an essential part of every college campus.

Overall it was a fun day and I really learned a lot. Towards the end of it I was really tired for the bus ride but I couldn't take a nap with all our boisterous conversations and sharing about our sessions. All I could think about though was how much I love the EWC and tutoring!

UYL (Update You Later for those that need a refresher [or newcomers] on what it means)
Andre!