9.3: Finding Confidence

Students go to the writing center not only because they are looking for ways to put their thoughts into words but also because they want reassurance. Daniel Phillips, the FIT tutor, wrote, “Sometimes we are there to tell you how good your writing already is (and it probably is already pretty good) and that you don’t need to change much at all. It’s
different with every student and every session.” I’ve never met anyone who went to a writing center to feel bad about themselves; there’s ninth grade for that. Hearing that your writing is good and that you don’t need to change what you have written is actually quite valuable.

Yecca Zeng, at FIT, told me,

I can see an instant confidence arise when students
walk through the door and find other students with
whom they may discuss any idea, any step, any type
of writing that they may be having trouble with.
When students realize their peers are the ones who
are helping, it is easier for them to relax and be more
outgoing and elaborate on exactly what they want to
accomplish.

Sometimes tutors can cure a case of cold feet, as when students invest time in a topic and even write most of their paper before they decide to change the topic and write about something else. Such last-minute, impulsive topic changes are usually a mistake. Most students would be better off if they had had the confidence to keep what they had written and sought input from others about how to revise it. “I have not come near to outgrowing the need to share my writing with a responsive, receptive person who can provide feedback and engage me in a discussion about how to move forward with revision,” said Sam Van Horne of the University of Iowa.

On the east coast, at Loyola University in Baltimore, Paige Godfrey put it this way:

Ever since I started working in the writing center, I
have had a student who always requests a consultation
with me. Being that there are so many wonderful
consultants in the writing center, I always questioned
what it was that made this student a “regular.” At the
end of the semester, the student pulled me aside to
thank me for all that I had done to help her throughout
the year. She stated that the most helpful thing
I had done for her was make her feel more confident
about her writing. Rather than pointing out the areas
that needed improvement, I like to focus on the areas
full of strength and work off of them to improve the
weaker areas. There is no doubt that many students
need improvement with their papers—I am certainly
not Shakespeare myself. However, if you show them
their own potential, it allows them to look deeper inside
themselves as writers and grow from it.

For many people, the hardest part is showing their writing to someone else.

According to a popular website for health information, WebMD (http://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/g...socialanxiety- disorder), the most common situations in which people feel anxiety due to potentially negative judgments from others are:

• Eating or drinking in front of others

• Being the center of attention

• Interacting with people, including dating or going to parties

• Asking questions or giving reports in groups

• Using public toilets

• Talking on the telephone

• Writing or working in front of others

Most people are okay with toilets and telephones, but who hasn’t experienced writing anxiety? The important thing is to reduce the
feeling of vulnerability. Here is the University of Iowa’s Erica Bazemore
again:

The ability to share something as personal as a piece
of writing can be a daunting task for some students,
but getting into the habit of not only sharing writing,
but having someone respond to it can help to
make someone a more confident writer. In addition,
face-to-face communication through writing and
speaking can help people develop effective ways of
self-expression and comfortable ways of communicating
with each other. Our society is becoming increasingly
less personal on the level of language and
through our daily interactions, but writing centers
have a built-in mechanism to counter this trend. The
writing center is a place for taking the abstract and
making it concrete. It is a place for collaboration,
sharing, expression, and empowerment.

For a few students, visiting a writing center feels like admitting they are not good enough to be in the course they’re taking. I spoke to one of the graduate student tutors in my writing center, Motasim Almwaja, an excellent writer from Jordan who is cautious about what he says and writes in front of his friends from the Middle East because
he does not want to appear foolish. (He had to remind me that even in soccer, accepting defeat in his culture is not an option.) For him, strength vs. weakness is a matter of how you look at it. Motasim has worked very hard to perfect his English, constantly memorizing words and phrases and then using them when he speaks and writes. He points out that instead of admitting a weakness, going to the writing center shows strength and the resolve to work for what you want.

When you share your writing with a tutor, you can be pretty sure the tutor is not going to laugh at your writing (unless you write comedy) or criticize your paper. They’ve seen it all and are not interested in judging you or your ideas. They will help you to discover something good about your writing that you can build on. They want to see you succeed because helping students to write is their job.