As I gained experience as a Writing Mentor, my mentoring practices changed as I benefited from a better understanding of student needs. My feedback comments focused on fewer areas of improvement as the semester progressed after I realized that students may become overwhelmed by an array of suggestions related to different rhetorical elements. Still, I believe that I would derive benefit from improving my ability to recognize the challenges students face as they develop their writing processes.

As Dr. Beach explains in “Demonstrating Techniques for Assessing Writing in the Writing Conference,” “[once] writers have defined their problem, they select and test out those revisions that will best solve the problem” (Beach). My mentoring practices changed as I realized that my role as a Writing Mentor was to suggest the best solutions based on the most identifiable shortcomings in a particular student’s writing. While providing feedback on the first assignments due for the ENG 102: First-Year Composition course, I would blend encouragement with 2-3 suggestions. Ultimately, I realized that students would likely only incorporate one or two of my suggestions based on my observations as a combined reader, peer, and tutor. With increasing experience, my feedback comments became more succinct and, arguably, more effective. I made deliberate efforts to ensure my suggestions were clear and supported by logic without being too wordy. Additionally, I became more skilled at observing submission trends — which informed the announcements I crafted and posted for students. The increased conciseness and usefulness of my feedback comments combined with my increased adeptness as a grader resulted in my workflow becoming more efficient. I believe that the students I assisted appreciated my conscientiousness and willingness to cater to their needs. Since my motivation to enable student success was aligned with my mentoring practices, I realized that I spent little time dwelling on how to help students as Writing Mentor and, instead, engaged in actions that would be beneficial to students. However, recognizing the challenges students face during the early stages of writing development at the college level was difficult. When discussing a student’s work during a synchronous project revision workshop, I realized that the student was challenged by the assignment criteria, and also challenged by my feedback. In that instance, I engaged in a collaborative dialogue with the student to understand their intentions and guide them toward meeting the assignment goals and criteria. Eventually, I realized that the purpose-driven, clear metacognition I expected to be apparent in student submissions needed to be present in my feedback as well.

I observed that students in the online ENG 102: First-Year Composition course were hesitant to seek writing support. However, through synchronous and asynchronous project revision workshops and email exchanges, I was able to gauge the effectiveness of my mentoring practices. The gratitude expressed by the students I assisted — through revision workshops and email requests related to assignment goals/criteria and desired accommodations — in turn, helped me feel grateful to be a part of the learning process of students in the first-year college composition course.