I was challenged by Clint's question in regards to the last time a session was a risk for me and/or "really really fun." I honestly cannot recall the last time I took a risk in a session. There are lots of reasons for my non-extreme sport approach to consulting: students associate our help with grades; regardless of whether we consider ourselves experts or not, students certainly expect a certain level of expertise; I worry about my own accountability. I guess I'm wondering how to define risk...what would a consultant's risk look like? The good news is that I can easily recall a time when I had a really really fun session. I had one just today! I worked with 3 lively guys who were all in the throes of personal statement agony. By some circular route we reached a point where we were contrasting personal *statements* with personal *ads.* While it may sound frivolous, we were able to draw some really great comparisons and we are all laughing (lol!) at the end of the session. Would such a non-academic approach be characterized as a risk? HMMMMMM.....
While I admit I was once intrigued by the prostitute-consultant analogy, not by what Scott Russell had to say about it but by some of the ideas we threw around in class the other day, I can honestly say, now, that I am beginning to move away from the metaphor. While I once connected prostitution and the writing center through their brief meetings and levels of intimacy, I now question the nature of those meetings and the levels of intimacy available, and like David said in class, I agree that the comparison is a stretch. Here’s where I struggle with a connection between meeting a stranger, a prostitute, for sex, and meeting a consultant at the writing center. Although the ‘client,’ ‘student,’ or whatever, meets with a stranger for a limited period time to meet a specific desire, the level of intimacy between sex with a prostitute and a writing consultation differs. It is my experience that consultations between peers can be genuinely intimate as one discusses personal thoughts—there i…
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