My shifts this semester are Monday and Wednesday from 11 a.m. - 6:30 p.m. and Tuesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Currently, I am working close to the maximum allotted hours at the OUWC, and because of the amount of hours I work at the writing center during the week, I believe I am more exposed to a larger variety of clients and assist students, faculty, and staff with different types of assignments--no week is ever the same as the last one!
This week is half way over and I have already assisted students with papers for nursing, history, business, writing/composition, and even doctoral literature reviews. Because we serve clients from multiple disciplines each session must be approached differently from the last session, not only because the topics vary, but for the more important reason: each client has different writing needs. Assessing students' needs is challenging at times, especially in instances where the client is not a regular client of mine. If this is the case, I generally start the session by asking specific questions about what he/she hopes to accomplish in the 40 minutes we have together. Once we have established the initial needs I focus primarily on those needs in the initial meeting. This is not to suggest that I ignore larger concerns like assignment adherence (because a lot of times clients need help unpacking the assignment at hand), but rather that I do not lose sight of the clients' wants and needs; remaining perceptive and ensuring that you address the "bigger" concerns that pop up in the session that may not have been noticed by the client is important.
Perhaps my favorite part of working at the OUWC is establishing a professional relationship with my regular clients. It is not uncommon for a whole shift to be comprised of regular clients. I love meeting new clients, too, but there is just another level of personal reward and satisfaction when you can visually see a client's writing progress over a semester, or even after a few weeks.
It is difficult to write about a "typical" day because there are no "typical" days in the writing center, and that is part of the reason I enjoy it so much. I usually browse my scheduled appointments online the night before in order to prepare myself for the next day, but I often find that while I can go into a session "prepared" to go over certain techniques, citation rules, etc. (based on the client's description of what they want to work on/complete in the session), this often changes in the actual session. The client might change the direction of the session by shifting focus and attention to other aspects of the assignment, or I might suggest another course of action in addition to the initial requests provided by the student on our online scheduler. In any case, a consultant's job largely requires him/her to think on his/her feet, which not only keeps the job fresh and exciting, but personally rewarding as well.
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