What to Expect at an Appointment

In a standard appointment:

In a standard appointment, you and your tutor will:

  • Discuss your assignment and set goals using topics such as organization, syntax, developing a working thesis statement, and the use of precise language.
  • Spend  40-45 minutes working on the aspect of your paper or writing that you and your tutor agree needs the most attention.
  • You should expect to read some or all of your paper aloud and to discuss the structure and organization of your paper.
  • The appointment will end 45 minutes into the scheduled hour so that you can fill out a Client Feedback Form and the tutor can write a report that can be sent to your professor.
  • Appointments do not last for less than 30 minutes.
  • Do not expect the peer tutor to merely edit your paper or to work on more than one paper during an appointment. 

In a standing appointment:

  • You are assigned a specific peer tutor who works with you once a week to help you develop as a writer.
  • You and your peer tutor will select personal goals, which focus on improving specific areas of your writing to work on for the semester. 
  • At your first appointment, you should bring with you any previous recent writing you have done at the college with professor feedback/comments.
  • In concluding your first appointment and all appointments thereafter, you and your tutor will agree about what you should bring to the next appointment, whether it be an assignment sheet with clarifications from the professor, a draft in progress, or a graded draft for review.
  • If you do not have a written assignment to work on in a particular appointment, you still attend your appointment so that the peer tutor can assist you in other areas of writing through guided work on writing exercises or writing models.
  • Halfway through the semester, you and your tutor will assess and revise your goals.
  • At the end of the semester, you and your tutor will discuss your goals and determine if you will maintain a standing appointment for the following semester.

For Group Projects:

The Writing Center invites groups to schedule an appointment for projects and other group assignments.  The Writing Center maintains a few policies about working with groups.  First, tutors can “only work on the sections [of the project written by the] group members that are present—i.e. if a group member is not present, [tutors will] not review the section that he/she wrote.”  Second, all members of the group who attend the appointment must sign in, and they will be mentioned in the report to the professor.

Confidentiality and The Session Report:

When signing in to the Center for any appointment, you have the right to choose not to have a report sent to any college official, including all faculty members.

  • In this case, Writing Center personnel can only share whether or not the student completed an appointment.

If you choose to have a report sent to a college official, be aware that tutors are trained to write descriptive, not evaluative or judgmental, accounts of what occurs in any particular writing session.

  • Tutors write repots on all sessions, even though the report may not be sent to a college official. This is important for maintaining records for Writing Center review and development. 

Tutors are obligated not to share with professors any information about a student beyond the descriptive report.

  • Also, tutors are obligated not to discuss their clients with other students, including other tutors, outside of the Center.

Client Feedback Forms:

  •   At the end of every appointment, students complete an electronic feedback form, where confidentiality is maintained as well.
  • Only Writing Center administrators can view these reports.
  • Data from these reports is shared with tutor in aggregate form or to address patterns of problems in practices.
  • The Writing Center administration welcomes feedback.
  • Feel free to send individual emails to Center staff members as well.