What writing center?

It's currently 8:20 in the Writing Center and I am sitting with Michael anxiously waiting the arrival of our consultants. Unfortunately, I have the feeling that neither are going to show up and we will be left empty handed. Fortunately, we did not spend those 20 minutes twiddling our thumbs, but instead talking about the Writing Center's role on Richmond's campus.

Michael told me that when he asked his friends about the location of the Writing Center on campus, most of them were not sure. However with my friends, almost all of them knew where the Writing Center was but only because most of them happen to be writing consultants. Then we began to speak about the different options writing consultants have in terms of who the consult with. My friend Molly is a consultant and was assigned at the beginning of the semester a freshmen seminar. This seemed rather advantageous because 1. she has definite times where she consults with students and is never left wondering if she will have a consultation that day and 2. she has a sense of that curriculum of the course that she is assigned.

Going back to Michael's point, it seems to me that assigning consultants to freshmen seminars is a great way to promote the value of the Writing Center. Too often students come onto campus as first year students and assume that they can coast by writing the same way they did in high school. By assigning a class to a consultant, it gives students who may be too timid or reluctant to seek help an opportunity to do so. Also, given that they leave the Writing Center having acquired knowledge about writing that they did not have previously, the promotion will be done inevitably.

But alas, it is 8:30 and our consultants have still yet to show up. Perhaps there is another Writing Center on campus that Michael and I are not aware of, but it's getting late and I have a lot of work to do. At least I had Michael here to keep me company and chat about the possibilities in our future as writing consultants.