{"id":6909,"date":"2008-03-07T21:36:49","date_gmt":"2008-03-07T21:36:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/07\/serial-consulti\/"},"modified":"2008-03-07T21:36:49","modified_gmt":"2008-03-07T21:36:49","slug":"serial-consulti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/07\/serial-consulti\/","title":{"rendered":"Serial Consulting"},"content":{"rendered":"\u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> mins<\/span><\/span>

As expected, today’s Writing Center work was the most demanding yet–eight
\nappointments in seven hours (with a brief break for lunch). I don’t
\nmention it to complain. Rather, in those five-minute lapses between
\nappointments I was thinking of the surprise and exhilaration in the unknown of
\nwhat was to come. What is in store? How long will it take to get our
\nbearings and decide what to do next? <\/p>\n

Stacked appointments require a generalist’s deftness (even if one is not
\nsteadily capable of this)–there are great leaps from this to that, from one
\nthing to another. A first and second appointment do not make the third
\nappointment easier. But the language from the previous hour re-surfaces
\nagain and again in subconscious performance residue: how many times did I say
\n"prime" or "primes" between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m.? Three? Four? Maybe too
\nmany, as if in caught in a strange loop, some phrase or concept pops up
\nunexpectedly in fits of over-talking while searching for the elusive right
\nwords. Serial consulting: in certain ways it’s like being locked in the media closet with
\na flickering television set all day, sometimes fancying coherence and
\nintelligibility, sometimes doubting whether this or that thing fits with this or
\nthat other thing, and sometimes marveling at the great range of possible
\ndirections lurking everywhere<\/i> in a draft. <\/p>\n

Now I can’t remember them all: a "professional statement" for a
\nmade-for-television movie production internship, an essay on music as argument,
\na comparison of Hindu epics, Rubin Carter as inspiration for law school,
\ncontending worldviews between Hmong Brahmanism and Western medicine, a close
\nreading of Huck Finn (requiring specific references to ‘semiotics’, ‘reader’,
\nand ‘interpretation’), early planning and exploration on a five-page piece that
\nwill get at gender roles, mass media and the Cold War, and, finally, a
\ndiscussion of Obama’s vague references to "they" in the Iowa victory speech. At
\nthe end of it, two senses: one is a kind of merry-go-all-directions spinning
\naround–the disorientation in rapid sequence conversations engaging all of this;
\nthe other is a (cloudy) surprise at the degree to which a long string of
\nconsulting appointments is like drilling a core sample of the curriculum (as if
\nboring<\/i> into a glacier).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> mins<\/span><\/span>As expected, today’s Writing Center work was the most demanding yet–eight appointments in seven hours (with a brief break for lunch). I don’t mention it to complain. Rather, in those five-minute lapses between appointments I was thinking of the surprise and exhilaration in the unknown of what was to come. What is in store? How…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[173],"tags":[178,183,804,523,805,806,783],"class_list":["post-6909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing_center","tag-composition","tag-curriculum","tag-generalist","tag-loop","tag-sequence","tag-serial","tag-writing-center"],"yoast_head":"\nSerial Consulting - Earth Wide Moth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/07\/serial-consulti\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Serial Consulting - Earth Wide Moth\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u23f3 Approximate reading time: 2 minsAs expected, today’s Writing Center work was the most demanding yet–eight appointments in seven hours (with a brief break for lunch). 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Twice today I have heard the entry's title--and not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Writing Center"","block_context":{"text":"Writing Center","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/writing_center\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6897,"url":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/08\/but-im-not-comp\/","url_meta":{"origin":6909,"position":2},"title":"Feed Reader Live","author":"Derek Mueller","date":"February 8, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Back to back to back to back to back to back to back to back to back consulting appointments in the Writing Center today. Nine of them; every time slot filled between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., although my third appointment (slotted for a half hour) was a no-show. 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