New Blog-ginnings: a Debut Post from The Glenn

March 1, 2015

By Colleen O'Connell, Graduate Assistant

It feels like just last week the air was frigid and the ground was powdery white...Oh, right. That's because it was cold and snowing last week. Spring really does know how to mount a sneak attack, doesn't it? Hopefully the news that our print newsletter, Freewrite, is transitioning to an electronic format through this blog is just as pleasant of a surprise as the increasing amount of sunshine and the rising temperatures.

Our Fall issue of our newsletter had an article by Taylor, one of our tutors, called "The Writing Challenge," in which she talked about the common challenges we all face when beginning a writing project. The more I thought about Taylor's article, the more I began to think of how the nature of the "Writing Challenge" evolves as we progress in individual projects, throughout our academic careers, as professionals, and even as users of social media. All writers, even the most accomplished writers, need continual challenges to produce great work. Also, it takes real practice to begin crafting concise emails and those 140 character messages that actually grab and hold the attention of your intended audience.

In this blog, you'll hear about the various writing-related challenges our own tutors have faced, continue to face, and even some challenges they create for themselves to grow as writers. Other members of the Xavier community, including faculty from a variety of disciplines, will also be invited to engage in our discussion through this blog. You'll also get some insight as to how the Writing Center is challenging itself. For example, we're venturing out of our technological comfort zone this semester by transitioning from our comfortable print newsletter to an electronic-only format through this blog. The other technology challenge over the remainder of the semester will be working as a team to make our website more streamlined and useful. If you're one of our Twitter followers, you've also likely seen our blossoming Green Makeover with the help of Xavier Sustainability, and we'll update you on our Green progress as well.

As we post, we invite you to engage with us through comments on the blog. We're excited to see this conversation develop as we all support each other to not just produce better papers but, more importantly, to become better writers.