Category: Writing Consultants

Just Three Saturdays: Comparing Dissertation Writing Retreat Models

Ashly Bender, Assistant Director

Last weekend the Writing Center wrapped up our third Dissertation Writing Retreat. Much like the previous two dissertation retreats we’ve held, this one offered doctoral candidates the opportunity to have dedicated writing time and resources as well as time each day with a writing consultant. Unlike our previous retreats, we did not meet every day for a week; instead we met three Saturdays in a row. The difference in scheduling offered a unique experience that offered a different set of advantages than the week-long retreat.

First, the week-long retreat—which is a common model for these kinds of events—is useful to writers because it can be particularly helpful for breaking out of a rut and for developing daily writing habits. Our director, Bronwyn Williams, wrote during our first retreat about what the week-long model can offer. Some of our clients for the May retreats came in with the goal of finally wrapping up a chapter or with starting a chapter. Writer’s block is a common concern. In fact, this past May when I served as a consultant for the retreat that is exactly the place I was in, and I was hoping that like our writers I would be able to find the key with scheduled time each morning to write. We also work with writers during the week to develop daily goals or practices that will encourage them to do some writing every day. Hopefully these practices will continue once the week is over.

Certainly we have had good feedback from participants in the past two retreats. We’ve heard repeated calls for more retreats and more support for doctoral candidates in the form of writing groups and writing spaces. The School of Interdisciplinary and Graduate Studies has responded to some of these call, as this semester they are starting Dissertation Writing Accountability groups. And, of course, the Writing Center always welcomes those who simply want to use the space to write or work during our open hours.

While we’ve had good feedback about the week-long retreat, and plan to continue offering them, sometimes circumstances call for some flexibility. A number of those interested in the May retreat were unable to attend because they work full-time jobs during the week. Many of these students were candidates in the College of Education and Human Development, and with the support of their college, we are able to design a Dissertation Writing Retreat that would meet all day for three Saturday in a row. Like our previous retreats, participants wrote in the morning and then, just before lunch, a short presentation was given on a dissertation writing strategy. In the afternoon, participants met with a consultant to talk about parts of their dissertation, writing strategies, or other writing related topics.

The biggest advantage to meeting across three weeks—in this consultant’s opinion—was that there was a higher likelihood of developing habits. One hope of the week-long retreat is that repeated practice for five days, with support and peer supervision, will plant the seed of a habit. For the participants in this retreat, they had at least two weeks to practice and then report back about their effectiveness. There wasn’t as much direct support, but the accountability for progress was a little higher since they had a week to make progress between meetings rather than just an evening. One habit that I worked on with two of the participants was the practice of doing some writing or work every day that related to the dissertation. These women had busy lives—teaching, raising families, and other commitments—but they also worked hard to do even fifteen minutes of dissertation work every day. Of course, it wasn’t easy and some days that fifteen minutes didn’t happen. For the most part it did though, and I have confidence that they will be able to keep it up.

This is certainly not to say that one scheduling style for a dissertation writing retreat is better than another. Instead, I would argue here that each schedule works toward a different set of goals and has different expectations. Perhaps the week-long model is better for getting a burst of motivation and production that can get the ball rolling (again, sometimes) while the three-week model is more effective for establishing not just sparking habits. As the Writing Center moves forward and continues to host these retreats, we will be exploring these early thoughts and more. So, stay tuned; there’s more to come.

A Reminder to Myself: Seeing the Bigger Picture

Amy Nichols, Consultant

I don’t know what it is about the summer – perhaps that bit of extra flexibility in my schedule has turned me towards the philosophical – but I recently had an interesting consultation with a student that left me thinking. We worked together on some organizational and grammatical changes to the paper, but had a bit of free time left at the end of the session. On the spur of the moment, I asked where he was from – he had a lovely accent, but I had never asked. He told me he was from South Sudan, and we had a great discussion about our respective home countries.

This experience started me thinking more carefully about the students I meet every day. They represent people groups from all over the world, from all walks of life – and I know that part of my training is to recognize that. But, and perhaps because of that training, it can sometimes be easy to break a patron down into an “eastern” or “western” writing style, into the component parts of their writing.

Before I was born, my dad was involved in a terrible car wreck that left him needing multiple surgeries. He was heavily sedated but remained conscious while hearing the doctors talk about fixing his hip the next day, “just the way you’d talk about fixing a car.” And I have to ask myself – do I, in some ways, reduce these students to the things in their writing that I can help them “fix,” and does that help or hamper my ability to do so? For doctors, I imagine that (at least in cases of trauma) focusing on what you can improve is an important mechanism that lets you do your job efficiently and effectively. And my father didn’t criticize his doctors for reducing him to his component parts – by doing so, they were doing their job. But for my very different work of helping writers improve themselves, reducing an entire person to whether their writing meets certain criteria might interfere with being able to see the very things (their own creativity, the way they articulate ideas verbally rather than on paper, etc.) that will let them improve.

None of this is original thinking, of course. One of the first things we were taught at the beginning of last fall was to pay attention to students’ emotional well-being – if someone is crying because their paper is due in five hours but they’ve been away at a family funeral, the first focus is on that total person, on helping them get to a point where they can work on the paper. But in the rush of appointment after appointment and juggling life and schoolwork, it’s easy to begin to have a kind of surgical focus on papers and organizational structures. It’s easy, in short, to forget that key idea – that in front of me there is a human being with a complex existence outside of our interaction, and that paying attention to who someone really is can help me be a more effective writing consultant.

“Good Writing” Policy: An Exploration of What It Means to “Get” Writing

Ben Bogart, Consultant

I’ve noticed a disheartening battle cry rippling through the Writing Center this summer, and it’s one that I worry might be chanted out in the world beyond our doors: “I’m not very good at writing.” Sometimes it’s translated as, “I’m not very good at English,” or the even more frustrated, “I just don’t get writing.” It’s always offered with a smile, and maybe some nervous eyes fluttering around the room, as though the speaker has just confessed something shocking or controversial (I would expect the same body language from someone offering up, “I’m not really good at using my turn signal,” or “I don’t really like your Mom”). And every time I cringe a bit. But it’s not because of what the person has said so much as it is the feeling of defeat that they’re trying so hard to convey. There seems to be a lot behind a statement like, “I’m not very good at writing,” and I’d like to take this opportunity to explore what I hear when each time that statement is uttered.

You just don’t get writing. Okay, I suppose I understand. There are a lot of things I don’t get—things like cooking and mathematics and computer programming and football. We all have our natural talents, and if you’ve had enough life experience to warrant the claim that you simply don’t get writing, I’m guessing that it’s because you do get something else—something likely just as important. People who tell me that they don’t get writing are usually quick to offer examples of past failures to prove to me that they really don’t get it, and so I know a fair amount of these statements are backed by solid evidence. But more so than with any other talent that one may or may not “get,” what I generally hear when someone tells me that they don’t do well with writing is an echo of someone else telling them that they don’t do well with it. And that bothers me.

Let me try to explain. If you don’t have wild success in the cooking/baking world, you’re likely to know on your own: you bake a cake, and it comes out flat and tasting of baking soda, and as you slide it forlornly into the trash you mutter to yourself, “I just don’t get baking.” Fair enough. That cake wasn’t your masterpiece, and if anybody wants to claim that you do get baking, you can just have them dig out a sample from the trash can and see for themselves. Consider the opposite end of the spectrum: you bake a cake and it’s just delicious. You couldn’t stop licking the spoon you used to mix the batter, you had pictures up on Facebook before you’d even set the timer, and now that it’s done, you’re thinking that you might just eat the whole thing yourself. A friend comes over and tries it, and spits it out immediately. “Maybe you just don’t get baking,” she offers with a smile, hoping to lighten the blow. Do you buy it? I’m guessing (and really hoping) that the answer is, “no.” You tasted that cake. You fell in love with it before it was even fully done. You know cake, and that cake, sir or m’am, that cake was good cake. If you’re like my Aunt Sharon, you continue making that cake forever, trotting it out at birthday parties and anniversaries and holidays, and while everyone else politely folds your cake into their napkins when you’re not looking, you know deep down that that cake is pretty good cake.

And yet if we play this same scenario out with writing—particularly with scholarly writing—I don’t know that the same confidence generally plays out. You write a paper that you love (couldn’t stop licking the spoon, posting pictures on Facebook, etc.), turn it in to a professor, and it comes back with a letter grade lower than you expected and some kind of plus/minus code that conveys to you nothing except that you “don’t get writing.” This is where even Aunt Sharon, I believe, would falter. She might still have confidence in the cake, but that paper that just came back to her has convinced her that she really doesn’t know what she’s doing when she tries to put words together on paper. While she will certainly continue to bake with pride (and, ironically, to write about it on Facebook), she’s somehow been shut down as far as the writing goes. And that’s not fair.

Before we go on, I’ll certainly admit the analogy isn’t quite perfect. The cake respondent was just a casual friend, where the paper respondent was a professional. Sure, you caught me. The teacher that responded to the writing didn’t actually say Aunt Sharon didn’t “get” writing; only implied it. Yeah, okay. To further your point, I’ll confess that I don’t even have an aunt named Sharon. But at a very basic level, I believe the comparison works to illuminate for us a couple of important thoughts about writing.

1.) Most of us have more experience subjectively evaluating cake than writing. It’s a simple fact. There’s less at stake with a cake (this sounds like the beginning to a Wallace Stevens poem) than there might be with writing—it either tastes good or it doesn’t. We learn very easily how to distinguish between the two. But how do we distinguish between good writing and bad writing? What is bad writing, even? Anyone who’s ever been forced to read Shakespeare in high school and then try to explain why it’s so great to the teacher understands very well that taste in baking (though surely complex in its own right) is a bit easier to grasp than taste in writing.

2.) Writing seems to be connected to our identity as people in a way that baking just isn’t. If you bake a bad cake, you might just be impatient or distracted. Maybe you spent more time licking the spoon than you did actually mixing the stuff. You made a bad cake, and at the absolute worst, you have to go buy a cake from the grocery store and feel a temporary sense of failure. But when you write a bad paper? Well, you might as well look forward to a future of digging ditches or occupying various institutional buildings. At best, you just don’t get writing. At worst, you’re stupid, deficient, incapable—all words meant to designate that you don’t belong. That’s pretty heavy for someone who just wanted to tell you about the themes they picked up in The Great Gatsby. If we treated cakes in this way, a trip to the bakery would be the most nerve-wracking experience of one’s week.

3.) Writing fulfills a multitude of purposes, and thus has a multitude of forms, in a way that cakes just can’t match. I mean, I guess there are wedding cakes and birthday cakes. You could have devil’s food or angel’s food or carrot cake or any of the other varieties that exist out there. DQ has ice cream cake, and I’ve heard that in certain places you can even get “naughty cakes,” but at a very basic level, cake is cake, right? The varied occasions that you can associate cake with are all very different, but usually the cake is fairly similar—just modified in color or flavoring or . . . well, shape. But writing is way more varied than that. There’s writing that tries to inspire, writing that tries to argue a point, writing that attempts to get people to laugh, writing that is requested by others, writing that hopes to free and entrap . . . the list goes on. The occasions are certainly different as well: there’s writing that is meant to be shared with close friends, writing that is meant to be shared with colleagues, writing that is directed at complete strangers, and every group in between. And what’s important is that these forms are so wildly different that one can be quite good in one area, (say, poetry), and still have no clue what they’re doing when it comes to another (say, legal documents). So if you get disparaging comments on your Shakespeare report, does that mean that your Facebook post from the previous night is also worthless? No. It really doesn’t. What it means is simply that you have more experience reading and responding to Facebook than Shakespeare, and I believe that’s okay.

4.) Professional opinions in writing, as in baking, are still purely subjective. Bottom line: they’re all opinions. As in, “Well, that’s like, your opinion, man.” If a teacher tells you that your paper was crap, the odds are that there’s another teacher within that same area code that would disagree. Moreover, maybe that teacher had just made the exact same comments on 15 papers before yours, and so when it got written on yours, it came out a little less than friendly. Subjectivity, by definition, can be colored by all kinds of stimuli that you just can’t predict. So in the same way that you should doubt the opinion of someone who just got dumped and decided to tell you your cake was bad, you should question the opinion of someone who tells you your writing is not that hot. That person likely didn’t mean to label you for the rest of time.

I could go on and on about my great cake analogy, but I’ve probably made my case here. The point is that, when you tell me that you’re “not very good at writing,” or that you “just don’t get English,” I’m hearing you say that you’re accepting the evaluation of someone who told you that. They were probably older than you, and they probably said it in a really convincing way, and you just took it and decided to share it with me in the middle of the Writing Center. And I hate that. Because you’re not bad at writing, and even if you don’t happen to “get” it, it’s not like that’s a brand that needs to be burned into your forehead.

We all write, and increasingly because of the new media outlets that are out there (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Myspace, to say nothing of text messages), we write a lot. It’s a tool that we use to communicate our thoughts, and we generally do it without much trouble. It’s when we load writing up with all of our insecurities and past evaluations and uncertain expectations (commonly known as “writing for the academy”) that all of a sudden we start second-guessing ourselves and falling back on those old proclamations made by people who likely didn’t intend for them to become self-fulfilling prophecies. And that’s too bad, because just like someone telling you that your cake was bad should be a thought that is easily swept away and forgotten, so too should someone telling you that you wrote a bad paper.

For all my Shakespeare and Gatsby references, it should be clear that I think this happens a lot in high school. I’m sure it happens at the university as well. I want to make it just as clear that I don’t think it’s any high school teacher’s intention to do that. Maybe you had a grumpy teacher. Or, more likely, maybe you just had a teacher you thought was grumpy, and whose comments you read as a personal attack. Consider all those cake advisors: feel free to save all those things they told you about oxford commas and pronouns; certainly save the uplifting and generous comments they gave you. But please, just forget the sharp criticisms. I hate to break this talk of naughty cakes and fictional aunts for some sappy cliché, but please keep in mind that you are the only one that can hold yourself back in life. If you let yourself believe that your writing is bad, it may be that old, second-period English teacher whose voice you hear, but it’s you that has clung to it.

I’m declaring now, with absolutely no power to do so, that the Writing Center is only for good writers—that is, people who have the confidence to admit to themselves that they are good writers in some genre or are willing to work to be good writers. If you’re feeling frustrated that you can’t get your thoughts out on paper in the way you planned, rest comfortably knowing that this is a feeling all “good writers” have. I can point you to famous authors that are studied in upper-level literature courses who have felt the same way you did. The only difference might be that they didn’t listen to those people who discouraged their ability, and you did. You didn’t do so hot on that term paper? Well, think about the song lyrics you wrote that one time that made you feel accomplished. Or that report on your cat that you did in second grade—the one that got a smiley face sticker on it. Or that Facebook post that blew up with 27 responses from your friends in just an hour. And then try again.

What you probably mean when you say, “I’m not very good at writing” is, “I’m not comfortable with academic writing yet.” That’s completely fine. Your friendly neighborhood Writing Center consultant is here to help. It takes practice, and we’ll work through it together. It took us a long time to “get it” too. But don’t say that you aren’t very good at writing. Because we only take good writers here now.

Write, Talk, Repeat: Reflecting on the Benefits of Our Second Dissertation Writing Retreat

Ashly Bender, Assistant Director

Last week our former Assistant Director Barrie Olson wrote about the anticipation and promise of participating in our second Dissertation Writing Retreat (DWR). After a long, restful weekend and some reflection, it seems that the DWR delivered on nearly all its promises. Like Barrie, I participated in the retreat as a consultant, but as a dissertation writer myself, I found it helpful on multiple fronts. The biggest benefit of participating in the retreat, though, was being able to work with other graduate students both inside and outside of my field. The Dissertation Writing Retreat may be all about writing, and involve a good deal of writing, but talking about the writing helps to solidify the meaning of all that work, especially with those who aren’t familiar with the work.

Since I’m at the early stages of the dissertation process, my direct experiences may be somewhat limited. Nevertheless, between working with many different dissertation writers over the years and my own experiences, it seems that articulating the dissertation succinctly is one of the biggest challenges. In my own graduate program, we’re often advised to develop multiple versions of our answer to the question, “What is your dissertation/project about?”: ranging from an “elevator” version to a 15-20 minute version. Condensing an approximately 200 page project into a brief description isn’t all that easy when your brain is filled to the brim—maybe over the brim—with theories, research, examples, and other data that is “essential” to understanding your project. And, believe me, it all seems essential when it’s your project.

Working with two different students from drastically different disciplines (one in the Humanities and one in the hard sciences), I found that the feedback that they most often needed through the week was to write what they were explaining to me in sessions. That seems so easy, doesn’t it? All writers know it really isn’t as easy as it sounds. You often need someone else to spot the gap in your writing and tell you where you aren’t explaining something. It isn’t always about missing information though. Maybe your verbal description of your project really emphasizes a particular aspect or connection in your project, but you only have one sentence or a paragraph in 30 pages about that aspect. A good listener and reader can help you find those disconnections between what you’re saying about your writing and what’s actually happening in your writing.

What’s really inspiring for someone like me is that those conversations are not just helpful for the writer. Having these conversations with two DWR participants helped me realize why I was having such difficulty drafting the introduction to my own dissertation. I’ve been writing pages and pages leading up to the point that I always begin with when I talk to people about my project. When I realized this during the retreat, I thought to myself, “Well, duh. That’s the problem.” Reaching that “duh” moment isn’t always easy though, and I’m sure that it won’t be the last one I have before this whole dissertation is written.

Fortunately, for all twelve participants in this year’s Dissertation Writing Retreat, these kinds of conversations were not limited to the one-on-one consultations we had each afternoon. Each day around lunch time, we also offered short workshops about the dissertation process, including writing the literature review, managing time and production, working with committee members, and developing support networks. In addition to hearing from some of the writing consultants, we also benefited from the insight of Dr. Stephen Schneider and Dr. Beth Boehm. The participants found the workshops especially helpful because they offered the opportunity to ask questions about the dissertation process generally but also to receive project-specific feedback from those who were currently working on their dissertation and those who had already completed one.

With all this praise in mind, it seems a little suspicious that I would claim that the retreat delivered on almost all its promises. Based on this post and the feedback from our participants, what could possibly have been missing? Technically, you’re right; it wasn’t missing anything it promised. Yet, as ambitious scholars we’ll always want more of a good thing. More time to write, more time to work with others on our writing and on our projects. More free food. We are still students after all. Thankfully, many of our participants said they would return to visit the Writing Center to work on their projects. And hopefully, we will all be inspired to create these kinds of supportive writing groups beyond the structure of the Writing Center.

That’s our dream, and this year was one more successful shot at achieving it.

Another Year, Another Dissertation Writing Retreat

Barrie Olson, Dissertation Writing Retreat Consultant

Around this time last year, I wrote a post discussing both the success of the Writing Center’s first ever Dissertation Writing Retreat and the way that it helped me to re-envision writing center work. This year, as another Dissertation Writing Retreat is about to get underway, I find myself thinking about it in yet another new light because this year I’ll not only be a tutor but also a dissertation writer. In fact, I am writing this post as a well-deserved break after writing the first 1,800 words of my own dissertation. Yes, that’s right—1,800 hard-earned, mulled over, highly scrutinized words. Words that came after doing a classroom ethnography over the course of the spring semester, after transcribing over 27 hours of classroom discussions and interviews, after reading through thousands of pages of student papers and homework assignments. Honestly, in the grand scheme of everything I’ve read and looked at just to prepare for those 1,800 words, 1,800 suddenly feels pretty small and insignificant. The mounds of data—transcript notes, papers, and memos—makes me feel like this dissertation might never be written. Where do I start? How do I begin? Then again, in the face of those questions, 1,800 words suddenly feels like the accomplishment of the century.

But why the paragraph on my 1,800-word writing breakthrough? Because those 1,800 words have helped me to gain an even greater appreciation for the Dissertation Writing Retreat. Whereas last year I approached the dissertation knowing only what I’d heard from people who’d done it—that it was hard, that it was frustrating, that when it was over you couldn’t believe you were holding it in your hands—this year I feel like I get it a little bit more. I get why having several hours a day of uninterrupted time to write, surrounded by other people engaged in the same writing task, would be so helpful. I get why having someone else available to look at your 1,800 words that seem to make no sense and every sense at the same time would be valuable. Last year I understood the success of the Dissertation Writing Retreat as a tutor. This year, I am beginning to understand it better as a writer.

Admittedly, I am at the very early stages of dissertation writing. I know that I still have a great deal to learn about writing a dissertation—but that is what is so remarkable about the retreat. For a week, I will be surrounded by people at various stages, some just beginning like me, and others getting ready for the final signatures of their committee members. Each of these writers will have valuable strategies to share with me. What do they do when the data seems insurmountable? How do they overcome writer’s block? Obviously everyone is different and what works for one person may not work for somebody else, but exposure to varying strategies never hurts and too often, writing a dissertation feels like a solitary endeavor. The retreat makes it communal. Sure, I will have several hours of silence each day to type away to the sound of other people typing away. But I remember from last year the workshops, the quick snack breaks, extended lunch periods—all times when I can talk to other people about what they are doing and how they are doing it.

And while this is something I often do already (I am, after all, a writing center junkie who understands the value of frequent input on my writing), for the first time since I began my own research project, I’ll have people outside my field to converse with. I’ll gain valuable exposure to other ways of approaching research and writing, other ways of considering data and results. If my time in the writing center has taught me anything, it is that this kind of exposure is invaluable. I cannot predict the ways that this kind of exposure will broaden and even complicate my own thinking. I can only predict that it most certainly will. There is great power in moments like this, when methodologies and approaches collide. In my field, Rhetoric and Composition, some of our greatest breakthroughs have been the result of these moments—moments when we have “borrowed” methods from other fields, or applied outside theoretical frames and values to our own ideas. What better place to be exposed to that possibility then at the Dissertation Writing Retreat.

So it goes without saying that I’m excited for this next week. I hope to write, and write, and write some more. I hope to build, and change, and add to my 1,800 words. But I also hope to change my thinking, expand my strategies, and learn more about myself as a writer through the writing of my fellow dissertation retreaters. Who knows, it might even be fun…

The Importance of the Graduate Cohort

Alex Bohen, Consultant

As I began to brainstorm about what I wanted to discuss in my blog post I kept trying to remember what my first impression of the Writing Center was. I entered into the Writing Center for the first time in late August to take part in orientation. I remember seeing Dr. Bronwyn Williams, the director of the Writing Center, standing at the door welcoming everyone in and radiating an enthusiasm I was unaccustomed to at nine in the morning. Next, I saw Adam Robinson, assistant director, manning the coffee pot in a manner I would soon become familiar with. I continued to think back on that day and the next image that came to my mind was the myriad of strangers populating the rest of the room. These people were my new cohort and over the next several months they would become the greatest source of information and learning in my life. I have come to know that if I have a question my cohort is who to turn to for the answer. Having trouble helping a client? Ask the cohort. Wondering how clearly the thesis statement of your seminar paper reads? Ask the cohort. Not sure what classes to take next semester? Ask the cohort.

I want to focus on the cohort a little more closely. As a student and consultant in the Writing Center I can’t express how valuable my cohort has been to me. My only source of lament is that the cohort didn’t have more people in it. That is why I am incredibly happy to highlight and plug the Peer Mentoring program, headed up by two members of my cohort, Amy McCleese Nichols and Michelle Day. The program will pair new first year MAs with a second year MA who can function as the first building block for each student’s personal cohort. I think this is a great opportunity for all parties involved. New students will get an insider’s view on how to balance the stress of academic and personal life, as well as a familiar face at department social functions. Second year students get the opportunity to pass on all the helpful tips they have amassed after navigating one year of the program. I am excited to take part in this program and I hope that I can be as valuable to a new student as so many people have been to me during my first year at Louisville.

Time Away: One Key to Productivity

Brit Mandelo, Consultant

Though a variety of factors can contribute to low productivity, burn-out—minor or major—is the source of woe for many, many writers who are juggling high stress levels, large required outputs of work, and tight deadlines. I’m not talking procrastination; that’s a whole different animal. What I mean, here, is the sensation of doom and desperation, accompanied by a deep exhaustion, that can follow on the heels of a hard run of productivity. You just feel wrung out, but there’s still more to be done. Ignore the deadline for a bit, though. While it may sound counterintuitive, one of the solutions that can help is taking time away from the project in question: for ten minutes or for a day, a break offers a chance to recuperate.

Giving the brain a chance to rest is no different than giving the body a chance to rest. If you were doing a strenuous physical activity, you’d likely take a breather before moving on to the next challenge. The same principal can work to stave off burn-out, at least temporarily—long enough to rally and finish that research paper, possibly. The idea is to count in that break time as part of the process; don’t worry about the deadline while taking a break, or your stress level isn’t likely to decrease much at all.

Instead, if the half-finished sentence staring you down is giving you a headache, step away. Take a short walk, do the dishes, listen to music, go outside—whatever fits your fancy. An activity that isn’t mentally challenging offers extra breathing room, though sometimes a pleasant brain-stimulation, like a favorite movie or album, can be refreshing as well. Washing dishes or picking up around the house are a few of my preferred necessary distractions. (That way, the break also feels a little productive, too.) Don’t think about the project that’s driving you up a wall. If an idea happens, delightful. If not, don’t worry about it. Take the time to breathe, to loosen up, to let go of some of that doom.

When you return to the page after the break, it might not be easy, but it also might not be harrowing and awful.

Helping Writers Be Specific, or Why “What Do You Mean Here” is an Important Question

Daniel Conrad, Consultant

As a writing center consultant, I regularly hear students attempting to explain why they feel the need to come to the writing center. When asked why they have scheduled a visit, regularly students explain that they are simply “not good at writing.” Obviously, it is almost never the case that a student is simply born without the innate inability to write well. These students, who seem to be under the impression that writing is either “good” or “bad” and it is produced by writers who are either “good” or “bad” at their craft, most often benefit from exercises in specificity. As it turns out, in most of these cases, the work needed to make difference between what students perceive as “good” or “bad” is as simple as asking “What do you mean here?”

Whenever a student is struggling with clarity, either on a structural or sentence level, it almost always seems helpful to begin by asking them to explain. “What do you mean?” offers the student a chance to explain themselves beyond the confines of the paper. It allows them to make several passes at what might be a difficult-to-articulate concept or thought, and often results in a much more satisfying explanation which can be worked into the piece. By examining a statement more intensely, a writer is able to see the multiplicity of a statement, and recognizing the presence of undesired meanings is the first step to eliminating them.

Frequently, problems of clarity can be solved by fixing specific language. One common temptation when writing papers is to beef up language by dipping into thesauruses. Occasionally, clients will have used thesaurus and synonym tools throughout their paper in an attempt to spruce up a paper, but don’t consider the weight of that particular word which results in an undesired connotative meaning or a confusing construction. This is easily avoided by carefully checking the denotation of a word before using it, and heavily considering the connotation relative to the thought being expressed in the sentence. Even easier to fix, a writer only needs to ask, “What do I mean by this word?” Only in certain specific situations should a writer need to go out of their way to define a term or phrase for a reader. If it seems that a better word might better carry the weight of your message, use it! Not all synonyms are created equal. In the same way that a painter would not use just any shade of a color to set a mood in a painting, a writer should be deliberate in their word choice so as to best convey the message they wish to convey.

Once in a while the question “What do you mean?” heralds shocking results. “I don’t know.” “I’m not sure.” “Uhhh…” This happens to the best writers, and while it is certainly acceptable to not know everything, it is encouraged that writers limit the contents of their papers to things they can explain. If a concept seems insurmountable to explain, or seems wholly irrelevant, it is sometimes best to just omit it. Like pruning away dead leaves from a plant, removing confusing, extraneous, or downright nonsensical sections of a paper will only emphasize the well-crafted and developed facets of the work.

Ultimately, students who fear “bad” writing should be more concerned about nonspecific writing. While the two things are not inherently related, students seem to very often conflate the two. Fears of being a poor writer regularly seem to be dispersed after arguments are filled out, language becomes more developed and specific, and the structures of arguments are more directly linked, all of which can emerge from simply asking one’s self and answering, “What do I mean here?”

A Two-Way Street: Learning from Clients in the Writing Center

Scott Lasley, Consultant

With my first semester at the writing center complete, I call up the images of all the students I’ve worked with and surprisingly, find more faces of science and business students than English major students. In the few months of my infancy as a writing consultant, it was especially daunting to work almost exclusively with students in fields of engineering, business, and chemistry because what could this lowly English student help with outside of mundane grammatical and surface-level concerns? This sentiment was a mere manifestation of my “newness” anxiety that was barely a whisper by the end of the first month. I became entranced with what work the non-English major students brought in to the writing center. I found myself learning ideas and concepts that I never dreamed would cross my path from deformable models regarding imaging software to simpler things like how to write business letters and memos. It was as if I had become the student, my eyes wide as I listened to the teacher inform me of some new piece of knowledge.

I remember reading a student assignment about some new findings regarding a hominid species that supported the possibility of co-evolution in Southeast Asia. Staring down at the pages of pictures and blocks of text on this new hominid, I found myself getting lost in the circled and highlighted prints and lines, entranced by the unexpected nature of this newly found knowledge. What if it were true? What if this changed our very understanding of world? Dramatic, I know, but being presented with something I had never considered or even thought of made such findings like a stop sign of sorts in that I must wait and take notice of what lies in front of me. Even though I knew next to nothing about evolutionary studies, I could not help but absorb all that could from what I saw, like a young boy does when listening to his father. I craved to know more and found myself taking mental notes of names like homo floresiensis and co-evolution as I worked through the session. As I sat down in front of my computer after the session, I quickly brought up Google, typing my mental notes into the slender search bar, excited less by what I may or may not find and more by the shear possibilities of what might be found.

This experience, like many others so far while working at the writing center, has demonstrated the importance of consultants not only tutoring and teaching students in order to help them become better writers, but learning from them as well. That’s not to say that we have to play the role of the engaged student or that we will always enjoy and want to know about what our clients are working on. Desire and curiosity have their limits. However, by being intellectually curious of the world outside the English department, we not only see what other writers are doing, but we also open our minds and by extension, our writing, to new areas of intellectual exploration.

Teaching Practices in the Writing Center: Looking Forward

Amy Nichols, Consultant

More than a year ago, I took my first glance at the University of Louisville website. I remember being enthusiastic, as a former professor had recommended the program as one which might match well with my interests. I looked over the application and the professors in the department, but what really caught my eye was the description of the graduate assistantships for M.A. students: “Until they have completed eighteen hours of graduate work in English, M.A. GTAs are assigned to the University Writing Center.” As a student deeply interested in writing pedagogy, both in writing centers and in the classroom, this requirement crystallized my interest in the program; however, I still had some reservations. Would I be able to make a successful transition into the first year composition classroom in the second year of my M.A.? Would one year of classroom experience give me a strong enough C.V. to apply for other teaching jobs in the future?

While I won’t begin teaching in the classroom until next fall, I can sense many of my questions already being answered through my interactions with students and assignments from a broad swathe of disciplines. As a consultant who students view as an ‘outsider’ not involved with the class or the professor, I have been able to watch them react to a variety of assignments, and to observe instructions and prompts which might engender interest or confusion. In addition, I have had to constantly refine and diversify my approaches to explaining any given assignment, seeing what methods help clarify the finer points in the art of academic writing.

Beyond these hands-on, writing-related experiences, there have also been moments when I have had to help students understand the college writing culture. When students begin with “I’m not sure what my professor means by…” our conversations often move beyond the piece of writing itself. I sometimes find myself becoming a sort of cultural guide for students learning to navigate in the world of academia; how to ask for clarification on assignments, how to request a meeting with a professor, and other elements of the communal life of the university often directly correlate to writing what might seem like a simple response paper. These conversations have made me remember my own experience as a first-generation student at a small liberal arts university, learning what Ruby Payne might call the “hidden rules” of college life – rules which might seem extra-textual, but which are critical to the success of any piece of writing (and success overall) in the world of academia.

Perhaps these observations are obvious; all writing is produced within specific contexts for specific audiences. But the position of writing center consultant sits at a strange intersection in the university: some liminal space apart from classrooms, professors, deadlines, and disciplines, and yet intricately connected to all of these things. Without this direct experience at the writing center – that is, without getting involved on a deeper level in that interplay between individual and community which we call collegiate writing – I cannot imagine myself seeing the same set of needs in my future students or setting the same kinds of specific goals for my pedagogy moving forward. As I move into my second semester of tutoring, I can honestly say I would not have wanted my assistantship to begin in any other way.