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Navigating through graduate school is an arduous journey, one that requires a delicate balance of self-assurance, determination, and collaboration with colleagues. It is in graduate school when students are continually challenged, some for the very first time, as they are required to clear hurdle after hurdle without losing the confidence and resolve with which they entered their respective programs. However, only after a graduate student has overcome seemingly every obstacle does the truest test of his or her student career begin with the completion of a thesis or dissertation.
Graduate writing consultants often work with a student in the midst of completing this endeavor. Frequently, these students have brought their theses or dissertations to the writing center before, as the longevity of the paper precludes any attempt to consult the entire paper in one sitting. Resultantly, consultants are forced to pick up where the last consultant left off with very little insight into what the thesis or dissertation is truly about. This vague understanding of the students’ theses or dissertations shifts the consultation away from global issues and instead towards local issues like grammar. While focusing on local issues is not a bad thing, it does mean that global issues (i.e. consistency or effectively supported arguments) are not the focus of the consultation. Thus, although a student may come to the writing center numerous times—and may have a grammatically sound thesis or dissertation—the paper may very well be significantly flawed because none of the consultants truly understood its aim.
One way to overcome this problem is to have a student writing a thesis or dissertation have a consultant he or she meets with repeatedly so that the consultant fully understands how, what, and why the student is writing. Regularly meeting with a consultant not only prevents consultations from morphing into editing clinics, but also ensures the thesis or dissertation is staying on topic and is consistent in its entirety. Furthermore, when a student meets with the same consultant a rapport is developed, which is one of the best assets a consultant can utilize during a consultation (Gillespie and Lerner 8). The development of a positive rapport can help foster an environment conducive to collaboration and instill a sense of continuation between consultations.
If, during the writing process, the student leaves town or has a scheduling conflict that would make the regularly held face-to-face consultation impossible, many writing centers offer students an alternative medium. For instance, many writing centers offer daily online and phone consultations for both graduate and undergraduate students that are synchronous. Because consultant schedules are permanent during a given semester, if a student attending one of these schools moves away from campus when finishing his or her thesis or dissertation, which happens frequently, the student can still meet regularly with the same consultant and have the “same access to writing support as those students living in our city [Orlando] or on our campus [UCF]” (Carpenter 14). The following is a sectional breakdown of the various benefits accorded to a student writing a thesis or dissertation as a result of meeting regularly with the same consultant over time.
Confidence and Resolve
One of the harshest realizations when starting a thesis or dissertation is the understanding of what its composition truly entails. Students can sometimes be overwhelmed by this realization when they hit a period of writer’s block. This can cause a loss of confidence in the writer and the direction in which the thesis or dissertation is headed. Legendary soccer coach and motivator Sven Goran Eriksson once said, “the greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.” Uncertain if they are accomplishing anything at all, students gradually lose the confidence they began with as the possibility of failure enters their mind. Consultants who regularly meet with a student develop a rapport and thus have the ability to provide the student with self-assurance and resolve more so than a consultant who the student has never met. Indeed, a couple of encouraging words like “what you have here is much more organized than before” can be a good confidence boost and help remove any notions of self doubt or failure.
Collaboration
It is no secret that when individuals bounce ideas off of one another that the end results are usually better than what would have been produced individually. However, collaboration does not occur when one of the parties is unmotivated or uninterested in collaborating with the other. By regularly meeting with a consultant that the student is comfortable and interested in talking with, un-collaborative consultations can be avoided. Instead it is ensured that consultations are productive and time is not spent getting repeatedly acquainted with one another while the student explains his or her thesis or dissertation.
Continuation
Regularly meeting with the same student also ensures that consultants are afforded the opportunity to provide feedback on positive developments students have made to their work; continuation allows a consultation to be “a process of giving positive reinforcement, not just of finding errors” (Gillespie and Lerner 42). Positive feedback lets students know that they are making progress and are not wasting their time writing in circles. Also, by scheduling regular appointments, whether weekly or monthly, students have some semblance of structure. In cases where a positive rapport has been developed, the consultant can use that structure to encourage students to set deadlines while also establishing both short-term and long-term goals. For instance, a consultant could request that the student tries to have the bulk of a particular chapter or section done before the next consultation. A student without any deadlines now has one.
Conclusion
By no means am I suggesting that the consultant takes the lead in setting deadlines and providing suggestions. In all tutoring scenarios, the consultant should complement the student’s advisor and take a secondary role that buttresses that of the professor. However, if one student requires more assistance than another student, the onus is on the consultant to provide the proper amount of guidance necessary to ensure the student understands how to improve his or her thesis or dissertation. The most important objective is that the student walks away from a consultation that was as helpful and informative to them as possible. For graduate students in the course of writing a thesis or dissertation, meeting regularly with the same consultant makes the fulfillment of this objective much more likely.
Works Cited
Carpenter, R. “Writing Center Dynamics: Coordinating Multimodal Consultations.” The Writing Lab Newsletter 33.6 (2009): 11-15.
Gillespie, Paula, and Lerner, Neal. The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring. New York: Pearson Longman, 2004.