Why Working at a University Writing Center is Awesome

This past Thursday was my final day at the University Writing Center. It was incredibly bittersweet. It has been one of the best jobs I've ever had for many reasons, primarily the main reasons anyone would love a job: flexibility, community, variety of work, and helping others. But leaving is also a means for celebration for any student leaving the Writing Center. As all tutors at the center are students, leaving means graduation and greener pastures in parts unknown. Even with the prospects abroad as a legitimate TESOLer,this coming August, it's hard to call leaving the UWC a draw.

Picture of Writing Centers, c. 1591

Most people, even students at the university, don't have a clear idea of a UWC because they've never been. Others think it's a storehouse of knowledge where you can drop your paper off to be checked for grammar (linked to Andrea Lunsford's Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of the Writing Center). Mostly, it's just an awesome place where people come in, talk about their papers, and get peer feedback from people who have been shown to have some competency in writing to learn some new tricks to add to their writing. You learn something new every time you come in.

For someone who has never worked at or been to a  UWC, it may be hard to imagine, so, here's a snippet from my final session. A preface: The whole session was a bit strange because I had just gotten back from the eye doctor on campus who had dilated my pupils to the size of saucers and severely impeded both my ability to read and my sensitivity to light, in addition to making me look like I was either on something or had a concussion. Sounds fun, no? Despite looking like a feral cat and being disoriented from the perspective shift, it went really well. On Thursday around 3:00 I greeted my appointment in the main office and walked him back to our workroom to sit at one of the tables. He was a graduate student working on a final paper for his negotiations course for an MBA. He graciously agreed to read his paper out loud (given my imposition). The premise of the paper was: use the negotiation strategies learned in the course and apply them to your own negotiation. Looking for an extra pickup truck for transport, the writer had gone above and beyond and solicited nine different people on Craigslist for the perfect truck. After meeting with his ninth seller, he came across the perfect truck that met his specifications and using a very humorous method of chewing down the price, i.e. walking around the car with scrutiny, acting uninterested, sighing audibly (I think the descriptions of his grumbles were my favorite) saying he had other cars to look at, and eventually knocked the price down from $2000.00 dollars to $1200.00. As someone

OBD Scanner and ODB: Not same same.

who royally fails at negotiation, it was a pretty insightful read. We chatted about the course, about graduation, about life, about grammar and the succinctness of his writing style, about using academic vernacular in lieu of more informal words, about places where additional examples would be helpful for clarification of certain concepts and about something called an OBD monitor which plugs into the car and reads diagnostics. It's all really cool stuff. However, I misheard what he said and thought he said "ODB", like the rapper, wherein we both shared in a 10-second dance party singing 'Shimmy Shimmy Ya'. Mm-hmm. Best job ever.

This final session was particularly fun for one of my favorite reasons: the writer left with constructive feasible goals by the end of the session, I got to learn on the job about cool stuff I'd never even thought about, and we both had fun. People from all over the university bring their papers to be looked at and offer all their best (or sometimes not-so-best) ideas for revision, so this dual-sided learning happens frequently on the job and it's one of the things that has made working at the Writing Center super duper awesome. My last session ended on a sweet, satisfying note, as have all of my adventures at the university in the 16 months I have been here. :)

English as a Language of the World, Jay Walker 2009

I find this quote incessantly facinating.

"English represents hope for a better future; a future where the world has a common language to solve its common problems."