Daina Goldenberg

      I started working at the Odegaard Writing and Research Center (The OWRC) in Autumn 2014, as a sophomore. For the past two years, I've engaged in 45-minute, one-on-one sessions with writers from dozens of departments around campus. Writers have brought in personal statements, resumes, CVs, essays, literary analyses, websites, blog posts, lab reports, safety reports, doctoral dissertations, assignment prompts for their own teaching courses, classroom reflections, memos, smartphone apps, proposals and practice exams.  At the OWRC, we work hard to achieve a conversational peer-tutoring approach that focuses on writing as a process: we practice indirect and reflective questioning, active listening strategies, negotiation of tutor-writer priorities, and meaningful ways to talk about grammatical concerns. We don't pretend to be experts - we instead endeavor to bring out the writer's ideas and agency regarding their approach to writing.

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      This all sounds a bit preachy - but the thing is, we all really believe in the nature of the work we do here. When I started working at the OWRC, I had trouble looking past minor grammatical concerns, and tended to address them in detail with writers (a more directive approach) - which seemed okay, because the writers had mentioned that they wanted to work through grammar. Later on, though, I started focusing more clearly on content and organization, casually looking past minor grammatical concerns to help address writer's worries regarding the overall effectiveness of their papers. I appreciated the incredible quality of ideas and analysis that writers shared in their work, which was certainly not invalidated by minor article-use issues.  And even when students wanted to work specifically on grammar, I slowly got better at negotiating a plan by which we could address "higher-order-concerns" (content, structure, organization) while making time and space to discuss grammar in the work too.

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       Perhaps most importantly, the OWRC became a space to get to know and communicate with a diverse set of people every week. The writing center schedules hundreds of appointments every week - you are bound to work with writers of many different backgrounds. Writers shared their heritage, their socio-economic backgrounds, their family stories, their research and travels, their approach toward their majors, and their involvement at the UW, through applications, papers, and conversations. I have worked with many international students (some through one-on-one sessions, and some through Targeted Learning Communities - a 1-credit course facilitated by OWRC tutors in which a small group gathers once a week to talk writing strategies for use in their courses) and have been blown away by students' ability to do academic work in two, or three, or even more languages. Some personal statements brought me close to tears - they were so inspiring, and I was honored to be entrusted to read and talk about them with the writer. 

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     In my third year at the OWRC, I'll be working as one of several student assistant directors: it is an administrative role that provides tutor support and mentorship, focuses on maintaining different areas of OWRC operation, examines promotion and outreach opportunities for the center, and (in my case) addresses the effectiveness of front-desk operations. So far, I have been involved in two rounds of tutor training, and a major revision of a new-tutor-training workshop. My colleague Emerson and I attempted a new approach to offering introductory classroom visits (a total experiment), and I have been navigating the tumultuous waters of prioritizing work-related e-mail. I think that this will be a challenging role - but I am also excited to join a really amazing administrative team in one of the most (I think) progressive and welcoming workplaces on campus. We'll see how this year goes! 

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Before Autumn quarter's start, I built a visual representation of a one-on-one writing session. It used existing OWRC materials and was shaped by meetings with the admin team. We wanted to include an activity in new tutor training wherein tutors would use a detailed handout (read beforehand) to form their own intuitive visual. We wanted to share our visual, created via a similar process, to offer one additional perspective that might be useful. This was our way of looking at a writing session:

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