Appointments

The goal of the Writing Center is to help you develop your writing and to help you develop as a writer.

Faculty and peer readers are available to help all members of the Drexel community with writing and writing projects. In-person appointments are available at the Writing Center and at Drexel libraries, and the Center also offers online appointments. Information about appointment availability and locations is available on our schedule.

Faculty and peer readers can help by providing feedback and encouragement as writers develop topics, evaluate drafts, make decisions about formatting, and revise/copyedit for clarity.

Things to know about meetings with Writing Center readers:

Readers do not correct, grade, proofread or edit a writing project for you, but will help you to think about the project and ways of revising and improving your work. Readers can help you develop ideas, understand how to work within a particular rhetorical situation (including considerations of audience and genre), consider ways of integrating evidence to support and demonstrate your thinking, and revise your writing for clarity. In final stages of a project, readers can guide you as you proofread and copyedit your work, and can help you understand issues of grammar and usage, as well as determine correct formatting for citations.
Come prepared: Readers recommend bringing (or attaching, for online appointments) the assignment or any guidelines you want to discuss, as well as the work you've completed on the project (drafts, notes, etc.). Before your appointment, consider what questions you have, or what aspects of your project you'd like to discuss.
A single appointment may not be long enough to address all of your questions about a writing project. For some projects (especially larger or more complex projects), readers may recommend focusing on only part of the project in a single appointment; readers often recommend that writers schedule follow-up appointments as they revise, and many writers find it helpful to meet with a reader at several points during a writing project.

When you reserve in-person or online appointments with readers, you'll be asked to provide a Writer's Project Profile, which helps you to think about the writing project you’re working on and provides important information for the reader with whom you'll be working. For more information on components of the Writer's Project Profile, as well as some examples, expand the Writer's Project Profile area below.

Writer's Project Profile

A Writer's Project Profile is a reflective paragraph that helps you think about the writing project you are working on, and can help you prepare for a meeting with a reader. A Writer's Project Profile is a paragraph that addresses the following six items:

what writing project you are working on
what your goals for the project are
where you are in the writing process
what is going well in your work on the project
what you want to work on improving
any other information you want the reader to know (optional)

You can use the following as a template, but you may need to alter this in order to provide a profile of your writing project:

I am working on [define writing project], and in order for it to be successful, I need to [focus on goals]. Right now, I am [identify where you are in the writing process]. I think [explain what you are doing well], but I want to work on [explain what you want to improve]. [Provide any additional information].

Example 1:
I am working on a position paper about nurse-to-patient ratios for my nursing class. In order for it to be successful, I need to identify an issue and then show what I think about it. I need to support my position with research. I wrote a pretty rough draft, and am now trying to revise it. I think that I've explained the issue clearly, but I don't have a lot of research to support my view... I guess I'm not totally sure about what I think yet. I've never had to write this kind of paper before, so I'm not sure how much research I need, and how much of my own opinion to put into it.

Example 2:
I'm writing an essay about my past writing experience for English 101. I'm supposed to show how I did well on a past assignment, and also what I had difficulty with. I need to incorporate some of my class readings about writing and the writing process into my essay as sources, and I'm also supposed to do an interview. I did a draft and had it peer reviewed, but I'm not sure how I can make it better, and it's due next week. In my draft, I wrote about my SAT essay that I think I did really well on, and my college application essay that I had a hard time writing. But it seems really boring... after peer review I realized that I just described the assignments and what I wrote for them, but I'm supposed to write more about myself and what it was like while I was working on them. I also didn't use the class readings as sources or do an interview, so I need to figure out how to do that. I'm not sure if I need it, but I have a copy of my college application essay.

Example 3:
I'm trying to write an essay for my STAR Scholar application. I need to talk about how my STAR experience will help me achieve my "future career/education goals." I'm just getting started with this, so all I have for you to look at right now is some of my brainstorming about the research I've done and what I want to do after college. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to start the essay, and how to explain my goals. Also, this essay can't be longer than 500 words.

Scheduling

Schedule in-person or online appointments via the WCOnline Scheduling system.