PeerCentered

This just in from the International Writing Centers Association: Friends, Please join us for   WCJ Live  with authors   Harry Denny & Anne Ellen Geller this FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21 st , at 3pm Eastern/noon Pacific. Login and other important information follows: For a session abstract, author bios, and a link to Denny & Gellar’s recent  WCJ article "Of Ladybugs, Low Status, and Loving the Job: Writing Center Professionals Navigating Their Careers," check out  The Writing Center Journal ’s website at http://writingcenterjournal.org/ (Click “WCJ Live” on the homepage banner.)  To join Friday’s  WCJ   Live  session, click or copy and paste this link: https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2009401&password=M.B5D6A4042DE30E62080EB80F817308 The following information may be helpful as you prepare to log in to the session: If this is the first time you will be using Elluminate, you may be prompted to do...

For the life of me, I couldn't understand what they were saying. I truly wanted to contribute to my girlfriend’s conversation, and I understood all of the words she was saying to her friends, but the sentences she that came out of her mouth made almost no sense to me. What in the world is a Vera Bradley double tote with crossbody straps and a trendy clutch? How can a sundress be “crepe with a playful flutter”? And for the love of all things manly, why does everything lead back to conversations about shoes?! Despite my frustration with the current topic matter, I held in any desire I had to change the subject out of a fear of being made fun of; I didn’t want everyone to realize that I lacked any semblance of knowledge about the fashion industry. However, after 10 more minutes of listening to an argument over whether a skirt was cadet blue or turquoise, I finally jumped in, saying that I believed the skirt “would look better in ‘toke’”. The girls stared at me incredulously unt...

I think it’s safe to assume that most everybody in college understands the three main organizational blocks of an essay: intro, body, conclusion. As consultants, we know how these three blocks should look and what they should include, and we probably know about a dozen different ways to explain why/how/what. We got this part down. On the other hand, consultations are much harder for us to organize, since these usually take the form of a conversation; sometimes new consultants—or even veteran consultants—worry about how to get started, or how to end a consultation. I’m glad we’re worried because as it turns out, the structure of a consultation is as important for the student as organization in an essay is for the reader. The good news is, we don’t need to worry for long. The “format” is already ingrained in our memory, as I have pointed out above: simply compare our consultations to an essay. First, the introduction. I can’t count how many times I have used the word “game-pla...

We’ve all had them—the good writers. The ones who really know what they’re doing, who know what they’re talking about, who know the basic rules of grammar. The ones that make us draw a blank, a complete white wall of nothingness because—really—it is so tempting to stay at the surface level grammars and word choices and citations that we resist putting on our scuba gear and really diving in. But perhaps “diving in” is the wrong metaphor. “Diving in” might imply that we, as consultants, are initiating that first jump in the water, pulling the client in behind us…and I don’t think this is the answer to “how to help a good writer.” In fact, I think we should do the exact opposite: hand that scuba gear right over to the writer.  From my experience in being both a consultant and a client in these situations, I think that stepping back and letting the client take control is extremely important; if a writer shows a high level of comprehension about her topic, and if the reader isn’t...

A kind professor once told me that the most insightful ideas, the most profound projects always develop out of “openings,” points in our lives where “we become interested in, attuned to, involved with, and perhaps awed by other things, other people, and, in moments of reflection, our own selves” (Michael Hyde, Openings, 3). Not only did this professor teach me the truth of this matter—through conversations, lectures, and example—he wrote an entire book about it. For our intents and purposes, though, it is enough to know that openings are everywhere, but they are never noticed unless reflected upon. It is for this very reason that I start each and every one of my final papers the very first day of class—fifteen weeks before their due dates. No I don’t start writing—that comes later—but I do start thinking; I start looking for openings—for people, ideas, experiences, news stories, songs, even, that speak to me. I start noticing how things (a purposefully vague word) relate to the ...

                Josh Turner’s baritone voice quietly fills the interior of my car. Outside the window, old field goldenrods gently dance in place. I have noticed, lately, their shade is growing deeper, richer, more desperate for attention. The fall sun has taken its toll on them—given them life, given them color, but given them a crispness, too, that signals an end. In a given semester, I don’t have time to notice the Texas wildflowers. I notice other things—the traffic patterns, the characteristics of my colleagues’ footsteps, the tendency for deadlines to draw ever nearer—but not the wildflowers. This semester is different, though. This semester I’m taking supplemental classes at a university ninety miles away—ninety miles that I have to journey across four times a week.                 Ideally, I could spend my time on the road c...

Why Your Boy Friend Should Work at the Writing Center Hey, ladies (and gentlemen). In my last post, “Where Have All the Men Gone?” I addressed the stereotype that women are writers and teachers. Maybe this is why women are more commonly found in writing centers than men. But why do we need men? Don’t they have cooties or something? To be frank, the gender imbalance keeps us from offering the best services possible. A study on sex published in A Synthesis of Qualitative Studies of Writing Centers shows that male students feel more comfortable with male tutors, and female students feel more comfortable with female tutors. Apparently, dudes like that their male tutors tend to take a more directive, grammar-focused approach, while ladies like that they receive more nurturing, holistic advice. Here’s the thing, though. When it comes to improving writing, both of these approaches are helpful. Sometimes, our clients need a gentle shove in the right dire...