My favorite kind of tutoring appointment is when a student comes in with no paper at all.
This might seem weird to some people not familiar with us, and for good reason. If you’re going to the writing center, shouldn’t you have…a piece of writing?
Nope.
In fact, this can sometimes be the best time to come to the center. Even as a graduate student, often one of the hardest parts of writing for me is getting started, facing the blank page. I’ve been taught to cluster, list and freewrite, but sometimes what I need is someone to talk to about my ideas. And as a tutor, I love being the one who helps someone else through that process, from the despair of not knowing where to begin to having a road map to take her through the writing of her paper.
My goal in these sessions is for students to leave with that road map, and it can take several forms. There have been sessions where a student leaves with a fairly detailed outline. Other times, it’s a rough one that they can flesh out at home. At yet other times we may struggle through a half-hour session to develop a thesis statement–just one sentence, but one that gives them the opportunity to explore that idea into a larger discussion or argument in a future session or at home.
The great part about these sessions is that the writers are usually the ones with all the ideas. They just need someone to say them to. Here’s a typical scenario:
Student: “I just don’t know where to begin.”
Tutor: “What are you writing about? What’s you assignment?”
Student: “Well, it’s about how something has changed over time. I was thinking about writing about Halloween costumes.”
Tutor: “What about them?”
Student: “Well, nobody makes their own costume anymore. Now people just go to the store and buy them.”
Tutor: “That sounds like a pretty good topic to me.”
Student: “Wow…you’re right.”
But really, the student is right.