Consultations

Writing Resources serves all students at all levels in all disciplines at any point in the writing process. This means that we see it all; GSTR assignments, biology lab reports, personal statement drafts, poetry, political science papers, English papers, and so much more. Our consultants are trained to listen, ask questions, and intervene in both higher order (thesis, organization, flow, brainstorming, etc.) and lower order (grammatical constructions, sentence structure, etc.) concerns. That said, we are always seeing something new, so don’t be surprised if your consultant needs to ask questions or look something up to make sure you get the right information. Our approach to learning is centered on helping you grow as a writer long-term. While we may ask questions and make suggestions to help you build on and express your own ideas, we won’t tell you what to write in your paper or say during your presentation. We will point out patterns in your writing that may need revision based on the context of your assignment, and we will ask for assignment sheets to help you make sure you are responding to that context.

How to Prepare for a Consultation

We offer three types of appointment: 1) In-Person; 2) Video Chat; and 3) Paper Upload (for written feedback), and you will select your type when you fill out the original appointment form at https://berea.mywconline.com . Our peer consultants have training and mentoring to help you with your writing, but you can also help them do a good job by preparing for your consultation. To get the most out of your consultation, please prepare by reviewing the following instructions.

Some Things to Remember

Our peer consultants are still students. They are trained and mentored and can definitely help you, but they cannot predict the grade you will receive on any given assignment because they are not the instructor of the course.
Professional and student staff are both teachers and learners. We help every student in every discipline at every level across campus, and that work is complex. Our consultants may model good resource use by looking up the details of a citation question you ask or checking in with a supervisor or team member to make sure they give you accurate information. They may also ask questions about how the professor approaches the class or writing in general.
Feel free to make appointments with different consultants. Our consultants are encouraged to develop their own unique consulting style along a continuum of options available to peer tutors. If you find that you don’t mesh with one consultant’s style, please feel free to “shop around” and find a consultant you feel comfortable with; no one will be offended. We all work together and support our teammates and your writing.
When you show up for a writing consultation sometimes determines how much help our consultants can give. If you come the night before a paper is due and need to begin, the consultant will gladly help you triage and get started, but they cannot make a whole paper appear from thin air, nor can they guarantee that you will get good results from this method. If you regularly procrastinate (we get it!) on writing assignments, consider our next bullet point.
Have a tough assignment you are dreading? Did you know you can schedule three appointments per week with Writing Resources? Try out the three-appointment method:
- Bring that dreaded assignment sheet in for an appointment the day after you get it and start asking questions and brainstorming.
- Schedule a second appointment to go over your completed draft and refine your thesis and flow of information.
- Make a third appointment to do final sentence-by-sentence edits.

Have feedback or questions for us? We would be glad to hear from you. You will always receive an automated survey after each appointment, and we do review these each semester to see how things are going and where we can improve. If you have immediate feedback and need to talk to someone, please email Dr. Nichols at nicholsa@berea.edu , and she will be glad to correspond or set up a time to meet.