My First Consultations

In the very first consultation I observed, Tiffany greeted the student by shaking his hand, and asking how to pronounce his very foreign name, which made all of us laugh.  I thought that was a good way to establish a friendly connection from the beginning, and now that I’ve done my own consultations, I’ve already learned how much I value smiles and laughs during a consultation, especially at the beginning and end.  Both Tiffany’s and the student’s body language were excellent the entire time; she leaned in towards the paper, on the front of her seat, never sitting back in an unengaged way.

At one point during the session, the student asked Tiffany how old she was.  She was caught off guard, as was I, and he cut the silence by saying, “sorry… I just… I feel that with age, brings wisdom, so are you over 30?” to which Tiffany seemed a little more relaxed, and replied that she was 25.  She brought attention back to the paper in a more blunt way: she simply said “okay, now coming back to the paper…”  I guess I would’ve handled the situation in a similar way, but it was definitely something I didn’t expect, and I’m glad I didn’t have to contribute to that part of the consultation!  And she somehow managed to give him enough examples about how to correct tense, grammar, and punctuation that he left about five minutes early, clearly eager to get back to writing.  I thought it was a very successful consultation, despite the awkward age question.

Now, moving on from the prompts Melissa gave us: I had two consultations on Thursday, and I’m on the schedule for half an hour next week.  I feel like this is such an important time in my “consulting life”- the beginning!  I can never again have a first consultation.  I wrote about my first one on Peer Centered, but there are a few things I observed that I want to include in my journal.  First of all, I realized how much I value making a personal connection.  I love sharing a laugh and a smile at the beginning- after all, laughing is good medicine for a potentially stressful environment.  It makes everyone more comfortable.  I also noticed, after thinking a lot about my consultations, that at the end of both of them I thanked them for coming in.  I didn’t even realize I was doing this.  It just came naturally to me.  I am an inherently happy and optimistic person, and I can already see that coming through in my consulting.  It seemed second nature to use what my English 102 professor called “compliment sandwiches”.  While reading a paper, I said, “I really like this sentence”, or “this is a good way to do this”, and then sandwiched it with a suggestion for improvement.  The last thing I ever want is to discourage someone from writing.  I also said “this assignment has a lot of potential”, “this sounds like it’ll be fun”, and “this is I interesting” during my brainstorming consultation.  I could tell the student wasn’t initially very excited to do the assignment, but after the session, she was!

(As a side note, I really liked seeing Melissa and Joy conducting consultations.  I love that they did that.  It gave me a good feeling.  We’re all working together towards a common goal.  And I am really impressed how well we all handled it when two of our veterans got sick!)

This consulting thing is amazing.  I was so happy and felt so accomplished after I finally got to do it.  I am totally hooked.  It seems so perfect.  I am a quiet person in groups, but one on one, magic happens.  I love the dynamic that goes on between two people, and I feel like I can really get in there and help out in situations like our center provides.  I’ve said it before, but I feel like I’ve found my home, or my “center”, on campus, and it means so much to me!  I’m so glad I got this opportunity!