Writing Centers Meet. Few Casualties.

My job undergoes semantic change every couple years. At UCCS's Writing Center, we are officially referred to as "Writing Consultants", which was changed from "Writing Coach" to something less gay. Currently I'm using my seniority to lobby for "Writing Shaman", for whatever that'd be worth.

This is my third year of tutoring writing -- professionally, anyway -- so when the Colorado Writing Tutors Conference came around this year, I felt it would be cruel to deny them the light of my sagacious presence.

Or something like that. It would be my last chance before graduating, so I wasn't about to miss this year. It raised my eyebrow to find that the conference would be held at Colorado State University-Pueblo. Now, I'll say that the school's quite good in its own right, especially if you're there for science, but I did once spend half an hour convincing a friend that it existed.

"Oh, yeah? Then what are their sports teams called?"

"(Sigh) The... the Thunderwolves."

"You're making shit up."

"No, I'm serious!"

11 universities showed up to the conference, but I'm proud to say that tutors from my school put on more than 25% of the presentations. My colleagues and I mostly attended each others' readings in lieu any stranger's, following each other around in a devoted pack. It vastly limited the learning experience considering that we all more or less knew what our fellow UCCS tutors would be talking about, but when given a choice, ya gotta choose the family. But I've got to say it was nice to have a section of familiars at mine, covered in white and gold body paint and doing the Wave.

So anyway, I presented my paper – “High-Stakes Tutoring: Liberating the Personal Statement Writer” – as the very first speaker of the day. My essay still had some tweaking in order by the time the conference rolled around, so I didn't read from it so much as consider it as I spoke.

The gist of of it was that most undergrads who write the personal statement are wholly unprepared for the task. They bam out what amounts to little more than a resumé in paragraph form -- which may answer the question but is the complete opposite of what admissions boards are actually looking for. Granted, the personal statement, only a single part of the "accept-me-please" bundle you send out, varies in importance from school to school, but the kinds of essays that most students actually submit are no help to their cause.

I described the ways in which writing tutors can change this, making themselves invaluable to grad school applicants, and by the end I advocated for writing centers to increase outreach to these writers who need our services as desperately as anyone.

The rest of the conference was quite nice. Their Writing Room director and staff played good hosts to the thing, keeping the event a structured yet casual exchange of ideas that it really ought to be.

At some point we took a tour of their Writing Room, which was... different. With all of its obvious college-kid influence in decoration, their workplace made ours seem stuffy by comparison, and I tried to keep from putting on the snob as I passed through it. I did turn my nose up at a prominent portrait of MacGuyver (even with its clever paper clip appliqué) as if to announce, "I say, this is hardly conducive to an academic learning environment."

The same could perhaps have been said of a pile of magazines that sat on a corner table, periodicals I remember being along the lines of Entertainment Weekly or Glamour. I didn't understand the need for them, whether they were for reading material while students wait or for constructing Brangelina collagés.

Still, hard to knock a bunch of writing tutors who seemed professional, nonetheless, and were quite enthusiastic about sharing what they do. And that willingness to talk shop was most folks' reason for being there, anyway.

I heard a rumor that next year's conference will expand out to encompass Rocky Mountain colleges rather than just the state of Colorado. To inaugurate this, they want to hold it way out in Wyoming.

I think it's a trap.