I learned something last night: I am verbose. So I have decided to correct myself in this. Starting now!

(How long do any of you think this’ll actually last?)

*****

Not fair, ForeverTeal, as you played a role in this whole situation.  Doormat #1, I believe.  Oh, fine.  Cheater.

So, yesterday after work several colleagues and I were interviewed over the phone for a doctoral dissertation on writing center work.  The candidate, Dawn, was very kind, clearly astute, and engaged in a very interesting project—and her son only called, “Mom!” once during the hour plus interview.  Clearly a woman on point, and I wish her the very best with completion of her Ph.D.

Dawn’s dissertation is on how assessment as a force influences people, primarily students and tutors, in writing center work.  Think of it as examining how awareness of being graded or scored affects someone’s performance.  Think of the difference between rehearsals and opening night, or practice and shooting a free throw in the fourth quarter of a tied game.  Writing centers fill a unique roll in academia and tend to become an intersection of lots of different, and sometimes opposing, systems of assessment—government instituted standards and curriculum, school specific requirements, idiosyncratic professor expectation, cultural assumptions and morays, etc.  When you’re trying to teach a student to communicate what they mean through writing in an efficient manner, and they’re focused on saying exactly what three different parties want to hear, it can be tricky to preserve focus on rhetorical purpose.  Plus many, many other pedagogical issues.  Very interesting, if you ask me.

Anyway, the experience was pleasant, enriching, and completely painless.  At least for me.  It was only after we’d finished that I realized my lack of discomfort likely stemmed from the fact that I had never seen fit to bite my tongue.  I now worry that this made the three other interviewees (all my friends) bite their tongues frequently.  I hope I didn’t monopolize things as badly as I fear but, well, I fear I did.

It’s a problem I have but, as Mr. Darcy says, it is not a fault of understanding—or something to that effect.  To the contrary, I’m quite aware that a captive audience tempts me to talk.  I’ve noticed it on conference panels I do as well.  Recently I’ve been making a conscious effort to spread the wealth around, as it were, but I find that when the balances are weighed I’ve usually gabbed more syllables than anyone else on the panel.  (I have discovered that sharing a table with a NYT bestseller is somewhat of a cure for this.  I’m pretty sure Tracy Hickman outspoke me at LTUE earlier this year.  Not by that much, but I think he did.  I hope so, as he was the Guest of Honor.) 

It’s not exactly that I just have too much good stuff to say (I’ll have you all mark the humility of that statement); it’s more that I have an opinion on everything and am occasionally lacking in self-consciousness and forethought.  This is helpful when I write a rough draft, as I can bang out my 1,500 words in two hours or less most days.  But I keep forgetting I don’t get those revise and edit stages when I talk.  Am I the only one that hates that?  Spoken words should be like typed ones: they should come complete with a string to pull them back to my mouth, gulp them down, and wait for something better to come along.  But if wishes were fishes then every birthday cake would be wet and ruined.  Isn’t that how it goes?  Fine, insert your own ichthyic idiom. 

Ah, well, I suppose I’ll look at the bright side—while my tongue may get tired, it never smarts for teeth marks.