Early this semester, I had my first of several meetings with my four weekly Writing Partner tutees. Known as “weekly clients” amongst Writing Center employees, these students are oftentimes international first years, and they’re specifically paired with senior Writing Partners. Three of my four weekly clients are in Directed Studies.
Though I’ve worked at the Writing Center for over two years now, I’ve gotten by without tutoring many DS. students. I haven’t been “avoiding” DS students. But let’s just say there’s a reason why I generally dislike working on Thursday evenings — universally known as “DS paper night.”
I did DS — cue the obligatory speculation about my character and personality. I learned a lot from it, and despite some major opportunity costs, I’m glad I did it. DS’ patented “throw you into the fire” strategy undoubtedly helped my growth in college. But it’s this “into the fire” mentality that I’ve been grappling with alongside my weekly DS clients this year. As the third week of the semester brought the first DS paper deadline, I found myself acting as much as an introductory English professor — and a source of moral support — as I did a writing tutor.
The reason for this stems from the program’s reluctance to adopt a centralized writing curriculum. By the time the first DS paper comes around, smart students like my DS weekly clients, who lack extensive training in college-level writing, are too often thrown for a loop. They find themselves simultaneously anxious about their first college assignment, nervous about crafting the “perfect” argument, and generally unsure of how to structure their paper.
Meeting with my weekly clients brought me back three years to when I started writing DS papers. I was too proud to admit this at the time, but it would’ve been incredibly helpful for the DS program to have incorporated specific writing instruction. I hadn’t read philosophy, much less written about it before college. I’d never written a paper on political theory. And though I’d written literature essays, it would’ve been nice to know what is specifically expected of college-level papers.
Meetings with my weekly clients — in which I often spend as much time discussing paper writing mechanics as I do clarity and flow — have only further illuminated what I was too proud to say when I was a DS student: DS’ academic red tape generally benefits the select students whose elite prep schools taught them the ins and outs of philosophy, political theory and literature writing. By neglecting, for whatever reason, to implement a universal writing curriculum, the DS program seems to assume that students must learn these skills through trial by fire.
This logic fails to consider two things. First, DS students from more privileged academic backgrounds have already gone through this sort of fire. Students like my weekly clients, and my first-year self, therefore operate from a completely different starting point — one lacking years of formal writing instruction geared towards success in the college classroom. So any sort of trial by fire that involves both of these sorts of students places the more experienced ones at an advantage.
Secondly, the “trial by fire” logic assumes a preferable alternative doesn’t exist. But that’s not true. We can look no further than “English 114” as a template. Aside from leading discussions about course readings, “English 114” professors guide their students through various levels of writing instruction. They spend entire class sessions discussing the fundamentals of college-level writing. They set deadlines for drafts, devise peer editing systems and create mandatory office hours to review students’ progress throughout the semester. These features are part and parcel of the “English 114” experience. They are likely superfluous for many students more experienced in writing. But they nevertheless level the playing field for all students involved, reinforcing existing skills for some and teaching new tricks to others.
The DS syllabus is likely too hefty as is to include such an intensive writing curriculum. But shouldn’t DS nonetheless incorporate some elements of “English 114”? Can the program not reserve some crucial time during early semester lectures and seminars for guided writing instruction? Can the first paper assignments not follow a more rigid draft, peer edit and final draft format? I think these changes are possible. Students like my weekly clients would benefit greatly from them.
RYAN BRONSTON is a gap-year Junior in Silliman College. Contact him at ryan.bronston@yale.edu.