Session Reports

We talked in class last week about how to write session reports.  After hearing what you guys had to say about my flawed comments, I am very confused about the content of our session reports.  A lot of people mentioned using the sheets as a place to write detailed notes about particular errors in a paper.  I think this approach could be very beneficial to a writer that needs extra guidance and may not be very directive in a session.  However, other individuals put a lot of pride in their writing and are diligent about making corrections on their paper throughout a session.  I think that I relate to the second type of writer- I like to put pencil to paper and mark up my drafts.  To me, the session reports are not very influential and I rarely refer back to them post advising session.  With that said, I do not think that session reports should be eliminated entirely, but rather, we need to reach a consensus about their role for the writers, other advisors, and professors.

I would like to share what a tutor recently wrote on the report after an advising session.  I went to the Writing Center for our reflections because I wanted to make sure that another reader thought that my paper was concise and overall a thoughtful piece of writing.  As it turns out, the advisor and I talked very little about grammatical errors and the whole session seemed conversational.  We talked about what I had written, and focused very little on any flaws.  Now that the context of the session has been described, I would like to write what my advisor wrote on the session report:

We read her paper and discussed more about the content of the work than any errors.  She was only 200 words over her limit, but the paper was pretty concise and taking much out would disrupt too much of the flow, we thought.

I’m curious to know what your thoughts are about this session report.  What works, what doesn’t?  Is it effective?

In my opinion, this report is certainly meant to be more of a summary of the session as opposed to a series of suggestions.  Thankfully, no major alteration was needed in my reflection, so I think summarizing the session is perfectly OK.  However, the general nature of the report leaves me wondering what we are supposed to write at the conclusion of our Writing Center appointments.  Any thoughts?