Letter from the Editors
As students descended on campuses all over the United States this past August, some of us back to in-person classes for the first time in over a year, the academic world found itself in a monumental moment of transition. The writing center was no exception to this shift. As we began tutoring in person once again, we had to grapple with what a “back to normal” might mean. What had we learned? What had we lost?
Where are we going?
Even beyond the current events that consumed our lives over the last year and a half, we continue to see transitions all around us, at the intersections of our race, class, gender, and language. They bridge our movements in and out of geographic areas each semester when we return to school. The campus shifts and evolves—new students, new classes, and new opportunities. Nothing is ever the same. More broadly, college itself is a liminal space, a major transitional milestone from childhood to adulthood, from classroom to career.
We wanted to capture some of those moments in this issue—for many of us back to campus, but also for those still zooming in.
Since the Dangling Modifier is a publication for and by writing tutors, we can’t forget that transitions exist on the page as well! Transitions connect our thoughts and help our writing flow. As tutors, we consider them an integral part of clear, engaging essays and we often help students craft them. Furthermore, just as writing involves transitions from idea to idea, tutorials involve transitions from topic to topic and moment to moment.
Our tutorials help us bridge the writing process together.
In that spirit, this issue of the Dangling Modifier invited writers to consider how transitions of all sorts— transformational periods, liminal environments, and even segues in our writing—might affect students, ourselves included.
Two pieces took a research-oriented lens to this topic, exploring how the pandemic has tangibly affected the ever-changing dynamics of writing centers. “Understanding Student Experiences Transitioning to College-Level Writing During the COVID-19 Pandemic” discusses the transition from high school-level writing to college-level writing and student perspectives on their writing during that transition. These findings have implications for writing tutors, as authors ask us to reconsider student voices and experiences in writing center practice. In “Understanding Trainees’ Perceptions: Evaluating the Shift from Traditional to Online Consultant Training,” a group of writers from Oakland University pose an increasingly important question: Can prospective writing tutors be trained as effectively online as they would be in-person? By gauging student experiences, the authors attempt to answer this question that will become vital in an academic world that emphasizes both online and face-to-face learning.
Other writers tackled pieces somewhere in between the “academic” and the “creative.” They may include a bibliography or be formatted more traditionally, but they also include personal narratives and are not tied down by the conventions of the academic essay. Both pieces are driven by inquiry like a research paper might be, though they explore these questions rather than suggesting quantifiable answers. In Mario Arrazola-Ramirez’s “The Borderlands of Zoom University,” the body of the piece is a list of questions and dilemmas, an “inventory” meant to interrogate the context of hybrid learning and challenge us to be more thoughtful about the challenges and absurdities of our present moment. Jane Tabet-Kirkpatrick also takes an inventory of a kind in “Between a Rock and a Famously Plagiarized Metaphor,” examining the moral and ethical entanglements of plagiarism. Her writing refrains from judgment, and as she considers plagiarism with different contexts, this taboo academic issue quickly loses its black and white framework. The willingness of these pieces to live in gray areas makes them perfect additions to our fall issue’s theme of confronting transitions.
Finally, The Dangling Modifier is in transition as well as we sought to incorporate more creativity and playfulness into our publication. We were lucky to receive submissions of poetry and flash fiction that grapple with our issue’s themes in exciting and new ways. “How is a Rock Not a Table?”, one of Jeff Howard’s two poems published in this issue, uses the structure of a paradelle, allowing multiple meanings to manifest from its repeated and evolving lines. Writing center tutoring sessions are places of transition between a fuzzy draft to a finished product; it’s a confusing path. Whimsical and deep, the paradelle emphasizes this journey. In the flash fiction piece “The Paper, The Pencil, and the Pencil Sharpener,” Sarah Flynn likens the landscape of writing tutoring to the tools we use to write. Halfway through the piece, the metaphors shift, mirroring our abrupt transition from in-person to online tutoring during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her final message speaks to the perseverance of writing tutoring through even the most drastic of changes. And to round out the issue, our own Lily Najjar adds a bit of rhetorical flair with a found poem that incorporates terms and phrases as written on a first-year composition syllabus.
We have greatly enjoyed spending this past semester getting to know the pieces published in this issue and cannot wait for you all to read them!
Sincerely,
Your Fall 2021 Dangling Modifier editors
Lily Najjar, Jana Parks, and Michael Votano