Just like last week, I again did not tutor anyone during my sessions. This week I was hopeful because I had one student signed up for a full hour. Unfortunately, this student did not show up. The last half hour was left available for walk-ins, but no one came during that time either. I’d like to focus on maybe why it is students do not turn to the writing center for help.
Before beginning this course, I told a couple of my friends about it and what I would be doing as a tutor. I got some negative reactions back and a couple positive ones. Some of my friends believe that going to a stranger for help is not as efficient. I had one of my friends tell me that he would prefer someone knowledgeable in the particular subject to read over his paper. He said he was not as concerned about grammar and layout of the paper but rather that his facts and information were correct. This one friend is a Biology major. I could see where he is coming from because his papers contain scientific research and detailed facts which, as an English major, I would not really know about. I did find it interesting that he would not want to make his paper stronger overall. Word choice, paragraph placement, and formatting could be just as critical to a paper as the actual facts being presented. I guess his teacher’s are not so keen about those issues.
The other friend that was part of the conversation was my roommate, an Environmental Science major, who graduated this past summer. She was completely surprised to hear that FSU even had a writing center. After four years of being a student here, she had never heard of the RWC. She even said she would’ve probably gotten better grades had she known there was a resource that helped her with her biggest issue during her time in college- research papers.
I guess it mainly depends on the student, but I can’t see the RWC as something that would hinder a student academically. I’m sure there are plenty of reasons why students don’t come in more often, like time obligations or maybe they just receive enough help in class, but maybe the RWC is not promoted sufficiently. I’d hope that more students start coming in and telling their friends about how great peer tutoring can be.
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