As a second-year screenwriting student, I’ve gotten used to hearing that my work “isn’t as difficult” as my peers’ assignments from their STEM-based majors. I agree that…

For my tutoring inquiry project, I chose to analyze the differences in effectiveness between peer feedback and teacher feedback.  DOWNSIDE OF PEER FEEDBACK Teachers use experience and…

This is my first year as a Writing Center peer tutor, and all I can say is that I love it. In my academic experience, I never…

Charlie, the assistant, indulges in literature. Hello, writing community! My name is Selena, a graduate student in English Literature & Publishing with a not-so-secret love for all…

Here at DePaul University’s Writing Center, we believe that anyone who writes anything is a writer. With that belief comes the implicit connotation that every writer, and…

I guess I’m doing this!  I don’t want to do this as much as you don’t want to read. So, we are on the same page, and…

In 1993, a survey of around 2,500 D/deaf and hard of hearing students in four year degree programs (not counting Deaf-only schools) found that nearly two-thirds cite…

I’ve worked as a Writing Center Graduate Assistant (GA) for the past two years. My roles include being a tutor, a Writing Fellow, a mentor, and the…

As rewarding as being a Peer Writing Tutor can be, the constant influx of research essays, rhetorical analyses, and other typical academic papers can get a bit…

Writing in American Genres EAL (English as an Additional Language) writers make up a sizable number of students who come to the Writing Center. As someone who…

For nearly 120 years, Writing Centers have been among the first establishments to respond to changing social attitudes in the world. Because of our unique, and oftentimes…

Outlining is an important skill to learn that can enhance a writer’s experience during their writing process. What is an Outline? An outline is a guide that…

During my application process to graduate school, I found that one of the most confusing and difficult parts of the process was the dreaded Personal Statement (AKA…

ADHD is one of the most commonly diagnosed disorders among students, and because the Writing Center is a service that works for the student body, it is…

This Winter Quarter (2023-24) I have been working on my senior thesis research paper. This paper is expected to be 20-40 pages long and is the longest…

I wanted to know if there were any principles or theories about tutoring creative writing, as opposed to academic writing. There aren’t many pieces of scholarship on…

Emotions are one of the foundational elements of writing. Despite this apparent distinction, emotions have often needed to be addressed further within the Writing Center environment. Whether…

Prioritizing what a writer says is far more important than how they actually say it. This is especially true when approaching culturally informed writing as a Writing…

Preface I do not tend to direct particularly literary work. I think people often conflate Writing Center practices with editing plays. While I am a dramaturg and…

Grace V. is a Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse MA student at DePaul University. She is a passionate environmentalist and advocate for eco-friendly practices. I talked with her…

Writers Guild is and has been an important part of the Writing Center for years and was one of the first places where I was exposed to…

I talked with Writing Center tutor Nic J. about their favorite genre of writing: Flash Fiction and Flash Non-fiction! Nic is a graduate student in DePaul University’s…

Nena T. is a writing tutor at DePaul University’s Writing Center. She is majoring in Health Sciences with a focus in Public Health. We talked about her…

Writing Centers in general and our Writing Center at DePaul have rightly become more focused in recent years on making sure our spaces and methods for helping…

I’ve been a Writing Center peer tutor since my sophomore year at DePaul, and I can easily say that working here has been one of the most…

Navigating the Fear of Critique in Creative Writing: This quarter I gave myself a challenge: write and complete a short story. Growing up, I would always start…

At one point or another, you will open WC Online and find that a writer wants your advice on making an essay more “personal.” Maybe a writer…

Have you ever been stumped when a writer asks how to cite a source you’ve never even considered citing in your own papers? Check out this list…

According to Grammarly, “Syntax in English is the arrangement of words and phrases in a specific order. If you change the position of even one word, it’s…

Applying Writing Center Core Beliefs to Singing I love to sing. In fact, I love to sing almost as much as Buddy the Elf does; however, not…

When I talk to other tutors about helping writers with poetry, I’m usually met with one of two, opposing reactions: total excitement and curiosity, or extreme intimidation….

Before working at DePaul’s Writing Center, I was in a religious studies graduate program—although I completed a humanities-focused degree, other students in my department were pursuing their…

Every winter and spring quarter in what I’ve dubbed “internship application season,” I’ve found myself writing and rewriting my resume and thinking about how to best talk…

In high school, I found myself wading through competition that I felt was mostly needless (at least for my mentality as a 17-year-old in the middle of…

As I embarked on my journey to write my Honors Senior Thesis, I believed that I had harnessed the experiences necessary to write without a problem. Since…

For our peer writing tutor class, Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse 395, Valerie M. and I focused on the transferable skills that are learned through Writing Center work….

What happens when the writer reads out loud? I figured out that I struggled to hang on to information I heard rather than read sometime sophomore year…

I’m sure we’ve all been there before – you’re in class, you’ve just completed a lecture, and you’re feeling very confused about what it is you just…

I was introduced to adrienne maree brown’s book Emergent Strategy in one of my dramaturgy classes, though the book never says anything about theatre. The book– which…

There’s always work to be done in the UCWbL in regards to linguistic justice. Gatekeeping remains overt and pervasive within academic and rhetorical spaces even as we…

For our Tutoring Inquiry Project, my group chose to research what skills we gain and develop as peer writing tutors and how those extend beyond the Writing…

If you think that all of the skills we’ve learned while tutoring at the Writing Center will be useless after we graduate, think again. In my early…

Looking for more resources about creative writing to share during Writing Center appointments? Want to learn more about writing novels? Here is a list of articles for…

One of our mottos at the UCWbL is to meet writers where they are. This can mean where writers are in the writing process, the writing experience…

Hello, writers! My name is Grace T and I am the new UCWbLing blog editor. I’m a first-year graduate student in the Creative Writing and Publishing program….

First and foremost, welcome to the DePaul Writing Center, aka the UCWbL.  If you’re reading this and we haven’t met, my name is Paul D. and I’ll…

Usually, when meditation is brought up in conversation as a possible solution to one’s problem, it is often met with the response of, “Oh no, I can’t…

My first ever appointment at the Writing Center was with a woman in her 30’s. Through the office’s online synchronous portal, we worked on an essay to…

This interview was recorded via Zoom on Friday, April 29th, between DePaul University’s writing tutor Brooks H. and Wheaton College’s writing consultant Meghan K. The current blog editor…

Most—if not all—of us tutors are used to rhetorical analyses: looking not so much at what an author is saying, but rather how they say it. However, what we’re less used…

Something that flies a little under the radar here at the Writing Center is reception as a tool for learning about tutoring.  As peer tutors at DePaul,…

Upon my admission to DePaul and subsequent decision to pursue screenwriting, I entered the fall of my freshman year with a very nervous kind of excitement.  I…

It was an unseasonably warm March night, at about 12 am, and I was frantically searching the campus job board under the dim light of my computer…

This is Part Two of a post appeared on UCWbLing on 04/25/2022 Something I really struggled with when I first started working as a peer tutor was…

When I first started working as a peer tutor at the DePaul University Center for Writing-based Learning (UCWbL), I found one of my biggest challenges to be…

I’m a Music Performance major. When I tell people that I work at the DePaul’s Writing Center as a peer tutor, I’m often met with reactions of…

As you may already know, Professional Development workshops have been part of working as a Writing Center tutor since forever. Topics are always timely, relevant, and useful….

As peer writing tutors, we’re often taught how to best help our authors with growing into their skills and cultivating their truest vision for a draft or…

Sometimes I cannot bring myself to write. Sometimes I cannot bring myself to write at all. I sit at the chair with an empty mind and shake…

During undergrad I took a copyediting course as part of my degree requirements. I was first drawn to the class because of the word “editing;” although I…

I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder about two and a half years ago, and ever since I have been searching for healthy ways to help with…

This interview was recorded via Zoom on Monday, February 14th, between DePaul University’s writing tutor Ishika B. and Wheaton College’s writing consultant Eunice R. The current blog editor…

I’m not usually the type of person who anticipates the new year, but for the first time in a while, 2022 felt like a fresh start… at…

Editor’s note: This post features a lovely throwback to previous staff members and treasured memories. On February 24, 2017, I attended the quarterly event, Dandelions in the…

As I consider my development as a tutor and writer over my three years working as at the UCWbL, I can see how much I have come…

Look anywhere online and you can find articles bemoaning the difficulties COVID-19 has wrought on people’s ability to maintain a social life. Despite the constraints that social…

I’ve been a creative writer for seven years and have submitted my short pieces to multiple academic workshops for critique and revision. And it’s not easy. Never easy. Whether…

Ever since I joined the University Center for Writing-based Learning (UCWbL) staff in the fall quarter of 2020, I found it hard to stay on top of…

As I complete my appointments, I often catch myself wondering — Did I do that right? Is my feedback what the writer needs? Omg, what if they…

We’ve all been there. We’re in an appointment, trying to point out to a writer why a certain sentence just doesn’t make sense. But we can’t think…

Or, What reading The Defining Decade taught me about work life as a twentysomething I am very much in the midst of my twenties, and when I…

Hello fellow UCWbLers, my name is Megan L., and post is going to contain some strategies I have developed for tutoring a literature review after doing a…

I recently had an Online Realtime appointment with a writer who was looking to add sources to her research paper on creating a diverse workplace. We scoured…

At the University Center for Writing-based Learning (UCWbL), you may have a writer come in that is intimidated because they have to draft a paper that provides…

My first impression of the University Center for Writing-based Learning (UCWbL) at DePaul was that the community was great, and everyone was so friendly and supportive. That…

I still remember to this day, seeing DePaul’s University Center for Writing-based learning (UCWbL) hiring sign in the window of SAC 212. I was a —slightly younger…

My transition into college life was a rocky one. I came to Chicago from a small, central Illinois Catholic high school, where I knew everyone at my…

The other day, I had an appointment with a student who needed help understanding a reading for class because she had to write a response to it….

One of my favorite parts about the Writing Center is that it is a place where all kinds of people meet. In one day, you may be…

Picture this: you receive the assignment guidelines and rubric for an upcoming written assignment. Your professor requires in-text citations and a Works Cited or References page at…

During quarantine, a lot of people have gotten back into reading for fun, and I’m definitely one of them. I hadn’t read a book that wasn’t for…

Verb tenses are one of those grammar concepts that tend to be difficult for native speakers to identify and speak on in a metalinguistic way. As a…

As a tutor, my self-perceptions on my grammatical strengths have been pretty confident from the start—I’ve been able to explain surface-level concepts regarding sentence structure, parts of…

What is a comma? When should it be used? A comma (,) is a punctuation mark used to indicate separation within a sentence. They help to group…

A noun is usually described as a person, place, or thing, which seems simple enough until you really unpack all the different types of nouns: concrete and…

The Basics Expletive constructions are phrases like “there is”, “here are”, and “it seems” that typically serve to introduce the content of a sentence. Just because a…

Whether we recognize it or not, most art involves writing in some way, be it scribbles on a paper napkin about an idea for a new painting,…

Now that all of your Gen Eds have been absolutely crushed by your awesomeness, only one stands between you and your degree: the Senior Capstone. This is…

Months before I finally sank my teeth in the first Creative Writing workshop coursework of my bachelor’s degree, I started beta-reading seriously in 2019. I’d only ever…

As writers throughout our academic careers, one primary lesson we constantly learn is to find our own voices; our pieces should be reflective of our personalities. Writers find…

I have found that the University Center for Writing-based Learning’s, (UCWbL)’s, core practice “Collaboratively set an agenda to guide your work” can be easily transferred to subjects…

As a student studying to be a high school English teacher, I was searching for an opportunity at DePaul that would help me grow into the educator…

by: Isis, Meredith, and Bill As writing tutors, our job is to help everyone improve their writing skills, build their confidence, and achieve their goals in writing….

Publication is an exciting opportunity that allows a writer to share their work with a broader audience, and also to establish themselves in their field. When I…

How do we learn to write? How do our teachers teach us to write? Do they teach us to write, or do they teach us to prioritize…

“If you want to become a better writer, read more.” Since childhood I have heard this statement from those closest to me, from my grandfather, a huge…

During the summer of 2014, I embarked on a two-week journey to a foreign country. I was in high school at the time so I was only…

There are countless rewards involved with being an employee at DePaul’s Writing Center. Interestingly, my roommate articulated and revealed one of these improvements to me. She said…

There is a reason that “Build and cultivate rapport” is one of the core beliefs of DePaul University’s Center for Writing-based Learning (UCWbL); it’s an integral way…

So, you finally finished that piece of writing you have been working on for days, weeks, or months. This pile of words you’ve painstakingly crafted feel like…