Learning from the students we can't help..

When I began reading this article, it introduced this character, Byron, that I would never expect to encounter at a writing center. While I understand that people that come in to the center often need help, Byron, I feel, is an extreme case. I would not feel comfortable or qualified to work with a person like Byron. I do not feel like I would know how to effectively approach him and his intense need for improvement. What would I do if I had someone come in the Writing center with a serious learning disability, for I know nothing about approaches to help people overcome them. Would my current writing center strategies work for Byrons, too? These are all questions that came to mind when reading just the first bit of this article.

I continued reading and then came across this quote on failure...

"We fail because we have not and cannot achieve some ideal that we imagine. We fail because others will not agree with our terms for success. We fail because others, and the world, do not

conform to our ideas and ideals and thus disappoint us from the success .. . we seek"

It really made me think about this idea of failure. Is it really failure, or just failure to one person, or yourself. Is this idea of failure just made up in our heads and inconsistent with how the project REALLY is? Failure to one may mean sufficient for another.

I am thinking about this in relation to Byron. How would I be able to understand his idea of failure? Maybe my idea of failure is too overwhelming for him, and achieving one step at a time is success for him.