by: Nathan Marquam, University Writing Center, Graduate Consultant
Graduate school in the best of times can feel isolating. Graduate students are left to figure out how to make the jump from being someone who consumes knowledge to someone who produces it (Aitchison 52). Especially with the added weight of a thesis or dissertation, a lot of this transition hinges on a student’s relationship with writing. Because everyone’s relationship with writing is unique, graduate students often feel unsure if they’re on the right track and if they are correctly performing their often newfound identities as both students and writers (Brooks-Gillies et al. 7).
But the fact that everyone’s relationship with writing is unique doesn’t mean that the path to growing as a writer is a solitary one. Writing is, at its core, a social act. Everything we write happens in conversation with the things people have written before. Citations can sometimes feel tedious and isolating, but in reality, citations are a way of joining the conversation—adding our voices to the great tapestry of things that have been written. The actual practice of writing inherently resists the individualistic expectations that academia places around it; scholar Cathy Davidson points out that “The ideal of individual authorship and genius… contributes to ineffective models of intellectual innovation” (qtd. in Duffy 9). But as William Duffy points out, simply noting that writing inherently relies on perspectives outside of our own doesn’t necessarily give us the tools that we need to receive support and open our writing practices up to become a collaborative and social space (22).
The work that I do in the Writing Center is about recontextualizing people’s perspectives on writing, encouraging them to understand not just writing itself but the writing process as something constructed from more perspectives than just their own. One of my most foundational moments in becoming a Writing Center consultant was when, in the class that we take in order to work in the Center, I was asked to draw a map of my writing process. I looked at the table full of construction paper, colored pencils, and crayons and wondered what part of this exercise could possibly have a meaningful impact on my development as a scholar. I make myself sit down and write the paper, I thought. Wasn’t it as simple as that?
Once I actually started my writing process map, however, I discovered that my own writing process was far more complex—and far less isolated—than I had initially realized. “Make coffee” and “pace around the kitchen” were some of my first additions to the map. Shortly after this, I added “Get stuck and go bug my roommate to talk through it.” How often, I wondered, did I bounce ideas off of people without even thinking about it? How much of my writing process relied on other people? Bringing my writing off of the page and into a conversational page had always been a strategy I’d used, but I’d never given it much thought. In the following weeks, I became more intentional in thinking about when and why I reached out to others to talk through my writing. I started going to the Writing Center as a writer, not just a consultant-in-training. And through doing this, I found that not only did my writing improve, but I also found it to be far more enjoyable.
I feel incredibly lucky that I was able to enter my graduate school experience with a preexisting understanding of when and how to bring my writing off the page and into conversation. This is a unique privilege enjoyed by many current and former Writing Center consultants, as Hughes et. al points out (25). The Writing Center community provided unique support as I began my first semester of graduate school in the midst of a global pandemic, and ensured that even as I worked from home and embarked on new and uniquely demanding writing project, I never felt alone or isolated. It seems incredibly fitting that my work now centers on facilitating writing communities and peer-based support for graduate writers.
With the support of the Graduate Office, the Writing Center now offers three kinds of support to graduate writers. The first is our bread and butter—one-on-one sessions with a Consultant (you can make an appointment on our website). The second is the Write-on-Site, where writers of all disciplines come together to get some writing done. The third is Graduate Writing Groups, which consist of weekly, focused, peer-led writing feedback and support. We have some groups that are facilitated by graduate Consultants, but we are also to provide resources to anyone interested in starting a group of their own.
We have Graduate Write-on-Sites running through the summer, and you can register to receive email reminders about them here.
Works Cited
Aitchison, Claire. “Learning from Multiple Voices: Feedback and Authority in Doctoral Writing
Groups.” Writing Groups for Doctoral Education and Beyond: Innovations in Practice and Theory, edited by Claire Aitchison and Cally Guerin, Routledge, 2014, pp. 51-64.
Brooks-Gillies, Marilee, et al., editors. Graduate Writing Across the Disciplines Identifying, Teaching, and Supporting. The WAC Clearinghouse and University Press of Colorado, 2020.
Duffy, William. Beyond Conversation: Collaboration and the Production of Writing. Utah State University Press, 2021.
Hughes, Bradley, et al. “What They Take with Them: Findings from the Peer Writing Tutor
Alumni Research Project.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 30, no. 2, 2010, pp. 12-46.