Here is an incorrect phrase I hear a lot: “The Writing Center helps you fix your paper.”
In fact, I believed this was true until I began training to become a writing tutor and, even as I trained, I pushed back on the idea that this wasn’t fundamentally what the Writing Center did. After all, isn’t that what most clients want us to do for them? Who was I to deny the client what they wanted?
But the UWC is not a place to come if you just want to “fix your paper;” rather, it is a place for writing-centric conversation. This misunderstanding of the writing center as a “fix-it shop” is a common one, pedaled by students and well-meaning professors alike. Unfortunately, the spread of this misinformation can lead to confusion or frustration once a writer sits down with one of the UWC’s tutors–the writer had an idea of how they thought the session was going to go, only to be told that was not what was going to happen. This can also be frustrating for tutors as well, who have to tactfully explain what, exactly, we do here.
So, what is the writing center, if not a place to “fix” your paper? First, the writing center seeks to dismantle the word “fix,” which implies that a writer’s work is imperfect, and can be fixed into a perfect form. This idea of a perfect form is a myth. Many writers come in and hope to mold their essay into that “perfect,” 100%, A+ paper–they may believe that we writing tutors understand what a perfect version of their paper would look like, and can “fix their paper up” to be closer to that version. In reality, writing is an art. It is subjective and personal and cannot, therefore, be “perfect.” And while tutors will help a writer deconstruct an assignment prompt and discuss ways to more completely answer the prompt, there do, of course, exist infinite examples of a paper that would earn a 100% from the professor, and none of them are “the perfect one.”
Second, the writing center seeks to develop your writing skills beyond that of adequately answering a prompt. Writing centers do not believe that a grade on a paper always, or even mostly, reflects the skill of the writer or the validity of the writing. This can create a misalignment between students and professors and writing tutors, the former two of which may equate the quality of writing to a grade. But your writing is not “75% good” if you received a 75% on an essay, or even “100% good” if you got an A. See how abstract and nonsensical that sounds? A grade on an essay measures how well you answered the prompt–quality of writing is up for debate. Because of this, the Writing Center works to “build better writers,” not necessarily better essays.
Finally, the writing center aims to provide a space for discussion. We believe writing is a collaborative activity, wherein writers engage with their community and build upon their ideas through critical analysis and open conversation. Nothing is ever written in a void–outside ideas and thought impact and inform every writer. Here at the Center, we hope to facilitate the creation and discussion of those ideas/thoughts to help the writer come away with a stronger, more in-depth paper.
In all of these goals, you’ll notice that grammatical concerns are not mentioned; this is by design. At the Writing Center, we call grammar a “lower-order concern,” in that it is not as prioritized as the content of an essay. This is another instance where tutors may encounter resistance from writers, who sometimes come in and just want a “quick read-through for grammar.” Tutors are trained to redirect the writer’s grammatical concerns, often to little push-back, but sometimes a writer will insist they only want us to fix grammar, or will not participate in content-oriented discussion. I’ve even heard of sessions where the writer presented the paper and pressed a colored pencil into the tutor’s hand, thinking the tutor would go through and markup grammar errors in the essay. This can be uncomfortable for the tutor, who is trained never to edit a writer’s paper for them, and certainly never to take a colored pencil to the page themselves.
All of this goes back to the incorrect notion of a “perfect paper.” By disproving this idea, the Writing Center hopes to free writers to express themselves in their work and find their voice. The written word is a great tool, and our goal is to give writers more confidence to wield and hone it.
