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In the Writing Center at this time of the year I can completely relate to Bob Dylan when he said during an interview, "chaos is a friend of mine." Needless to say, as most of you can imagine, we are quite busy. With the end of the semester just a few days away, and students frantically trying to complete papers they have known about for weeks, if not all semester, we see our fair share of stressed out people looking for a shoulder to lean on. And while we refuse to do the work for them, we do our best to answer their questions, assist them improve their organization and coherence, and help them decipher the mysteries of the various citation styles.
However, I thought I would take a few moments to address a common misconception about the Writing Center and provide ways to help students and faculty/staff see the benefit of coming in early and often.
As I have stated before several times, we are not an editing or proofreading service. We will help the students find errors in their text and we will discuss the errors with the students, but we will not go through papers line by line and correct all of their mistakes. A service such as that would be detrimental to the overall learning of the students in that they would have no knowledge of how to fix their errors once they are beyond the walls of the university. Instead, we offer to educate students on the proper use of grammar and mechanics, but almost always look at organization and coherence before addressing sentence level concerns.
For some students, and for instructors who want us to edit papers, this approach can be frustrating. To those students and instructors I say, "Make sure you (or your students) come in early and often." Coming in once at the end of the semester will really only result in a few questions being answered. However, if a student were to have come in several times throughout the semester and embraced the idea that writing is a process then the benefits would be tremendous. The student would undoubtedly have learned about the proper way to begin a paper (including the development of a thesis!!!), realized that topic sentences in paragraphs do matter, understood that research is used to support the thesis, and learned that the conclusion does more than just restate what was said in the introduction. Coming in late in the semester for the first time will be frustrating for the student because he/she will realize how much help is really needed with no time to work on improving deficiencies.
Another benefit of coming in early and often is that students would have an opportunity to develop a relationship with one of the consultants. This relationship can be beneficial in that both the student and consultant will be comfortable working together and be familiar with some of the communicative techniques of the other. In addition, an established relationship will most likely help provide knowledge of our scheduling system, which will help students understand that waiting until the last minute to schedule an appointment usually results in not finding one available.
This is a time of high pressure for all of us. In the Writing Center, we want to help the students as much as we can improve their writing, in your classes you want to see as many students succeed as possible, and for the students they all want to receive the passing grades they have worked on all semester. If we all work together to educate students that writing in a process and coming in to the Writing Center early and often is the best way to approach a class with a writing component then we will all reap the rewards. After all, as Aristotle said, "It is possible to fail in many ways…while to succeed is possible in only one way."
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