Tribute to My Mentor

My own Writing Mentor retired this spring after twenty years’ service as BYU Writing Center’s director. Writing her tribute revealed her principles influencing my life’s every aspect.

June 13, 2013

Dear Penny,

When you selected me for the Writing Center internship Winter Semester 2001, I was a wordy, ambitious Junior with little idea the impact your one-credit class would have on my future. Big things happened to me in your Writing Center. It was at our weekly staff meeting that I watched the Twin Towers fall on 9/11. The man I would one day marry left me his first Valentine in my Writing Center mailbox. Following our marriage, we ate dinner every night in the Writing Center copy room. I ran out between tutorials to vomit through the morning sickness of my first pregnancy, which you perceived without announcement. Even little things that happened in the Writing Center have made a big difference to me. Your treatise on gift-giving (including President Eyring's, “Giving With Joy”) whispers to me every Christmas; your thoughts on worship (referencing Doctrine & Covenants 93) instruct me each time I consider my covenants.

Twelve years and six sons following my BYU graduation and Writing Center employment, I have forgotten most of my literary theory, Shakespeare quotes, and post-modern poets; but I still remember the principles we practiced and preached at the Writing Center. I have conducted tutorials with my sons and their school assignments, with my brother-in-law and his MBA admission essays, with a neighborhood single mother and her special ed degree. I've tutored my Sophomore brother in his advanced writing class and my correctional educator brother in his prison ed paper. I've tutored my husband in so many business projects, he now gives tutorials to his colleagues. Beyond tutoring others' writing and honing my own, I've found practical application for tutoring strategies in everything from housework to Young Women meetings. In honor of your Writing Center retirement, I offer you my Top Ten of those applications:

1. First Things First. At the Writing Center you  taught us to diagnose and deal with the most critical issues first. Now instead of sifting paper pragmatics, I ref fist fights, fix supper, teach Joy School, and advise Laurels. Yet the principle applies. In all my responsibilities, I am most successful when I begin, like a thesis, with the end in mind; devote my best efforts to developing discipleship; and let that which merely cumbers fall out of my life.

2. Process Over Product. My young women's 2013 New Beginnings was not a professional production; but their self-initiated Mission Impossible act, Musical Values, and Personal Progress Jeopardy—the events that made up their New Beginnings program—engaged every Beehive, Mia Maid, and Laurel in creative thinking, problem solving, and leadership preparation more valuable than any picture-perfect product.

3. Content Over Conventions. Dashing daily through my housekeeping from disaster to disaster has seemed to me the homemaker's equivalent of, "Can you just check my grammar?" What a waste to tidy content that would be better purged; what a shame to lose six childhoods concocting appearances instead of making memories.

4. Keep it to Twenty Minutes. I'm not much better at this standard than I was as a tutor; but I'm learning to set my timers, wrap things up, and leave everyone better for brevity. From presidency meetings to family councils, Primary presentations to disciplinary show-downs, "Exit sooner, not later" proves advantageous.

5. Acknowledge Alternatives. I learned, coaching arguments composed on paper, the value of first acknowledging another's point of view. Employing this elementary step has smoothed untold negotiations from parent parking to business splits to brother rivalry to spousal spats.

6. Transition—Build Bridges. Whether connecting paragraphs or people, I have relied on bridge-building. "Bridge whatever might divide," Gordon Neufeld cautions parents; but I learned bridging first at  the Writing Center.

7. Respond as a Reader. Hypersensitive to correction myself, coaching and correcting once intimidated me. Responding as a reader (or, in teaching or parenting capacities, as an invested but independent observer) has helped me offer suggestions objectively, without fearing offense.

8. Describe what works; "good" is a four-letter word. Descriptive praise remains my most-used tool whether I'm counselling with my Laurel class presidency, complimenting my husband's gardening, or encouraging my sons' obedience. Little did I know deleting one word from my lexicon would influence so many other future efforts.

9. Einstein bagels work for breakfast. Bagels and cream cheese. Need I say more?

10. Writing is never finished; it's only due. As for sacrament meeting talks, annual auxiliary histories, and family Christmas letters, even so with Personal Progress, marriage, parenting, and discipleship. There are no check-marks on eternity's to-do lists.

So congratulations on your new beginnings as a season for change comes due. Your Writing Center mission is no more finished than my attempt to thank you for it. I am certain your work will continue to influence my life and others’. As careful as you taught me to be with superlatives, I feel confident asserting this one: I learned more at the Writing Center to prepare me to "go forth to serve" than in any other venue of my BYU education. Thank you, Penny, for the memories, the lessons, the opportunities, the tools, and the encouragement to pursue lifelong learning and service. May the Lord's choicest blessings attend your life's next adventures as you continue to bless, brighten, and teach.

Most sincerely,

Sheralee Hardy

Writing Center Tutor 2001-2002

Trail to Conquer

I let my eleven-year-old camp overnight in the wilderness with his two young uncles and a teenage cousin. In the morning, they would tackle a 20 km trail up a mountain rising 800 m. My son’s best buddy, his eleven-year-old cousin, declined the invitation: too hard. My son runs eight-minute miles and thirteen-and-a-half-second hundred-meter dashes. He’s won triathlons and the town 5K; I didn’t doubt his ability. His wilderness savvy? Yes. His knife-handling safety? Most definitely. His spiritual filter to distinguish between virtuous, praiseworthy, and not-so-much-either? You betcha. But his physical ability to conquer the trail? Not at all.

As my husband and I drove him to his uncles’, he smiled, he stamped his feet, he just about quivered with anticipation.

“I hope I can do it,” he grinned beneath his ball cap.

“If we didn’t think you could do it, we wouldn’t send you,” I assured him.

Lately I’ve heard myself emoting variations on my eleven-year-old’s ambition. I’m cherishing my marriage. I’m raising six sons. I’m affecting to direct my local church group’s young women organization. I planted a vegetable garden, though I neglect more than tend it. I make superficial effort to maintain a semi-tidy house (but don’t even ask about the yard). Last month I launched my writing tutoring business, and now I hear my own tremored giggle, “I hope I can do it.” Cliché as the mountain metaphor is, this week, it worked for me. And this weekend, I felt my Father in Heaven assure me, “If I didn’t think you could do it, I wouldn’t send you.”

Gabriel promised Mary, “For with God nothing shall be impossible” (King James Bible, Luke 1.37). Paul promised the Philippians, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Phil. 4.13). I do not doubt those promises. My organization? Yes. My work ethic? Absolutely. My spiritual, physical, mental, emotional, financial capability? You’d better believe it. But my Savior’s capacity to enable my ultimate success? Not at all.

So roll out the trail mix. I’m tying my boots. I’ve got a trail to conquer.

From Foundation Up: The Writing Diagnostic Hierarchy

Reviewing writing is something akin to renovating a house: order matters. You don’t fuss over paint color or crown moldings on walls that you need to remove. You don’t frame a floor plan unless it's affixed to a solid foundation. Good writing and good writing review follow the principle, “First Things First”:

1. Content (Foundation)
1. Is the argument sound?
2. Is there enough evidence to support each assertion?
3. Are the ideas fresh, substantial, well-developed?
2. Structure (Framework)
1. Introduction: Does it catch attention (in the right direction) and conclude with a thesis?
2. Body: Does it begin with necessary background and a brief overview of the other side's point of view, followed by arguments given in ascending order (most persuasive last)?
3. Conclusion: Does it begin with a thesis-restate, recap ideas, and allude to appropriate future action?
3. Thesis (Blueprint)
1. Does it state the thrust of the argument?
2. Does it provide an accurate road-map for the paper (listing arguments in the order they appear in the paper)?
3. Is it the final sentence of the introduction?
4. Paragraphs (Building Materials)
1. Does each paragraph focus on one central idea?
2. Does each paragraph begin with a transition (bridging the previous paragraph & providing a topic sentence, or mini-thesis, for the current paragraph)?
3. Does each paragraph include sufficient support for the paragraph’s assertion?
4. Does each paragraph conclude?
5. Clarity (Functionality)
1. Does the word choice contribute to and never detract from communicating content?
2. Do the sentences vary in length and structure, creating sentence fluency?
6. Conventions (Cosmetics)
1. Is the grammar, usage, and punctuation polished and appropriate?
2. Is the formatting correct for the chosen writing style?

Whether she is crafting a skyscraper or a summer cottage, the builder follows the same basic process. Likewise, poems and political speeches, editorials and encyclopedias, best emerge from review first of foundation and framework. Build a sound structure first. You can polish and paint after the roof and the walls stand secure.