University Writing Center

December 2008

VIC PENUEL: An all the time we’re here the kids are saying, do you really think we will get to going to go back? And we went back and forth a few times; most of us don’t go back now, because when we go back there’s all these things we’re going to have to do.  We don’t have time to do that while we’re here.  Dr. Rowe who is our dean of academics, the bottom half of his house is gone and he’s up here smiling telling kids it’s going to be okay.

MEGHAN: Howdy Aggies, I’m your host Meghan Wall and in this episode of Write Away we’re talking to the director of the Texas A&M Galveston writing lab, Vic Penuel.  Penuel is one of over 1500 refugees that blew in from Galveston Island after September’s devastating Hurricane Ike forced the university to close for the semester.  The writing lab was one of the only student services to transfer to College Station.  The lab has four part-time writing coaches or student consultants; Ben Gilbert, Helen Conrad, Mat Norwood, and Ginger Randerman.  Vic’s wife Eddie Penuel is a former high school English teacher that volunteers at the lab.  For the fall semester they have been set up outside the Texas A&M Writing Center on the second floor of Evans library.

What made you decide to keep the writing lab open?

VIC PENUEL: I didn’t have to decide about keeping it open, the question was how because the school had already made the decision.  The sent out messages to all the faculty, do you have space, do you need office space, what do you need?  And of course I had coordinated with Dr. Balester ahead of time and said to A&M and Galveston ‘I don’t need anything and we were here.’

MEGHAN: What difficulties did you have getting a hold of the students when you got here?

VIC PENUEL: Our communications system, which was so carefully set up with alert messages and text messages and email and phone trees, when we got here, a lot of them, they didn’t have internet.  They’d call a friend; the text message system for a little while in Galveston was down.  They were scattered all over the world and we’re used to having them settled all in one place.

MEGHAN: How did you go about getting the word out about the writing lab?

VIC PENUEL: After they were here a few days, we had a thing where they came up and got IDs and all that, in whatever the center is you have across the railroad tracks — I can’t remember the name of it. And we got over there and stood in line and shook hands with them as they came through and basically said ‘hey guys, here’s where we are.’  And there was a couple student organizational meetings the first week, and we made sure we had somebody there with a handout and our own little printed map and said here is the Evans library and here we are.  And after, I think it took about two weeks before they began to tell each other and come in groups.  When we started to have classes meet, our first week, we brought several classes over and said here is where we are.  Well with 1500 students, all of them know each other, when they get away from campus the word travels pretty quickly.

MEGHAN: What problems did the students face moving to College Station?

VIC PENUEL: The difficulties, as I mentioned, for our students, they came in, in the beginning, totally unknown surroundings, they’re isolated.  Our class schedules changed to once a week, they’re used to being able to see their professor two or three times a week.  The professor is not here, or they don’t know how to get hold of them.  So our first goal for them was to set up something that’s stable, that they know where it is, and they can come back.

MEGHAN: What type of help did you provide for the students academically and emotionally?

VIC PENUEL: Sometimes you make a difference, sometimes a student comes in and snap picks up on something or suddenly realizes ‘I need this to get ahead,’ and sometimes it isn’t even what you teach them, it’s that fact that they come in and they’re encouraged you show them and they say, ‘I can do that,’ ‘oh that’s all there is to that?’ and they go and they do it.  And when they do, I think the thing is it’s a process all the way through.  If the students get fragmented, we can pull them back together by focusing on this paper, this job, this instructor, what he needs, ‘you can do this, and you can do this today, you can do this, and come back tomorrow and show me how far we got and we can look at the next step.’  Right now we’re being kind of a counseling service, not in the sense that I’m not your shrink and I’m not your huggy-buddy friend.  But I am a stable thing that can say ‘we can get through today, let’s look at the paper.’

MEGHAN: Describe the relationship between coaches and clients at your writing lab?

VIC PENUEL: The people that work with me, my student workers and tutors, they share the same classes, we only have 1500 people.  And if you are a biology major, you’re in a lab with the same person who wants help with a project.  I mean, we have a much more personalized approach and it works on a small campus in a way differently than it could in a big one.

MEGHAN: What difficulties did your writing coaches face in coming here?

VIC PENUEL: The hard part for our consultants, they came in and they lost their stuff, all the way across the board.  We have people here taking care of some kid, and telling them it’s going to be okay, and the person that’s doing it doesn’t have a home to go to.  Or, stuff’s damaged and yet they’re still here and they’re saying I’ll deal with it when I get home, I’m going to take care of the students.  And the kids that are in my writing lab, well, they made a pack in the beginning;  we cry in private, we laugh and we smile in public.  And they got together and they said ‘hey, don’t put your problems on these kids, they don’t need that.’  It’s good for them too, though, because that’s a way of dealing with their own stuff.  When I’m working with Freddy out here who needs help putting a period at the end of a sentence, I’m not thinking about what’s happening at home.

MEGHAN: With the semester almost over, what are you telling the students now?

VIC PENUEL: We have one more week, and the thing there is, suck it up, make grades, salvage everything you can academically, score points, and guess what?  They do it because if they don’t, we’re going to go home with students that would have made As or Bs and because they were freaked in the beginning and tired now, it’s going to end up on a transcript with a C.  And the same person a year from now is trying to get into graduate school, and that C or D does not reflect scholarship, it does not reflect skill, it reflects, I really got tired at a really bad time.

MEGHAN: What’s going on in your head as you plan to leave here and make the transition back to Galveston?

VIC PENUEL: We are emotional about it, and we don’t want to leave here.  But on the other hand, it’s kind of like leaving family at Christmas that you go visit – brothers, sisters, relatives – you’re always happy to see them come, but when you turn around and go, your always glad to go home where you can put your feet up on your coffee table and watch the show you want to watch.  How do we get back two or three weeks before the students do so we can set back up because what we want when the come in, ‘hi guys! Business as usual.’

MEGHAN: A&M Galveston will re-open for December graduation and classes will resume in the spring of 2009.  Tune into our next episode where three of the Galveston writing coaches talk about their experiences in Aggieland.  I’m your host, Meghan Wall and thanks for listening to Write Away.