Marie-Lise Blain, Manager, Academic Writing Help Centre (AWHC)
What is it about your job that inspires you the most?
Working with students and contributing to their learning. Here at the AWHC, it is highly gratifying to see the difference we can make in students’ academic careers. It’s when we come across a first-year student who has trouble writing coherently or who has forgotten all the grammar rules that he never really wanted to learn in the first place, or a young woman who panics because she has to develop the outline for her master’s thesis — there is nothing better than to see such students take ownership of the writing process and really develop their writing skills, thanks to what they learned with us.
What also inspires me is the power of words, whether in a piece of academic writing or a political speech or a heated discussion with a colleague about the connotations and denotations of a particular word!
What would you change in the world today if you could?
In an ideal world, there would no longer be any form of abuse, such as abuse of political power, abuse between adults or toward children, the elderly or animals. There would no longer be any hate either. Violence and the need to control in all their forms would be done away with, and abuse and hate would be replaced by compassion and tolerance. It’s fascinating what you can discover when you look at people and situations through the eyes of compassion and tolerance, even though it’s not always easy!
Which five people (living or dead) would you like to invite to a dinner party? Tell us why.
The first person that I would invite is my dear late mother, because I would just like to say “thank you” and because it was she who taught me what a mother’s unconditional love means. I would also like the Dalai Lama to come and explain, as he does so well, how compassion and kindness could rein in the world. I think that Gandhi would be a good dinner companion, together with Martin Luther King – they could speak about a world where there would be a place for everyone, even the humblest, and where courage could move mountains. For the fifth guest, it would be a toss-up between Victor Hugo, Chateaubriand and Marcel Proust – it was Proust who taught me how to write beautiful, long sentences.
What is the best-kept secret in your centre?
The best-kept secret in the AWHC is its existence! Even though we currently receive over 2,000 student visits between September and April, a week doesn’t go by without someone – a professor, a student or an administrative staffer – telling us that no one knows about the Centre. What is also part of our secret is the kind of work that we do – no revision or correction, but rather support for the process of learning how to write, as well as development of the students’ language and critical thinking skills.
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