Greetings!
Greetings?
What does it mean to ‘greet’ people? Does it mean to simply introduce yourself by name to whoever you are greeting? To make them feel welcome to our sacred writing space? Is it the start of a friendship? Greetings could be all of these and more.
As tutors and students at a university with a very lean, 10-week quarter system, we all know how stressful some days can be. We see it in the fevered eyes and harried faces of writers, or we catch a glimpse of it in the mirror. These moments of terror can be debilitating and isolating, but in them also lies the opportunity for community.
How can we as writers and writing tutors use a greeting to help ease the pain of mass produced academia which often ignores the needs, pains, and exigencies of individual students and professors? Chris S. and I asked around the UCWbL, getting opinions from fellow writing tutors about the purpose of greetings and effective greeting strategies in the writing center.
Almost every one of the tutors we talked to in this casual survey agreed that greetings are a great way to put a writer at ease. Not only does this make things more comfortable for both the tutor and the writer during an appointment, but there is also research to suggest that a more relaxed state can benefit learning outcomes and productivity. Sometimes we get “a more relaxed state” mixed up with “relaxation” or “leisure,” but of course, as tutors, we aren’t here to massage feet or place cucumbers on eyes. Instead, we need to keep writers stimulated and engaged. But, as Peter Gray outlines in his book Free to Play, staying relaxed, playful, and stress-free actually helps people become more receptive to new ideas, more creative, more innovative, and more productive. Needless to say, staying relaxed also makes people happier and more mentally healthy.
One of our favorite go-to greetings was that of Zoe K., who told us they greet writers with, “Welcome to the dentist’s office!” Such a greeting immediately acknowledges the sort-of-awkward, sort-of-stressful situation that a waiting area can entail. A comedic yet empathetic greeting like this can be a very good way to begin an appointment. For face to face appointments, Saad Q. shared that he often comments on or makes a short conversation about stickers on laptops or buttons on backpacks.
Context can often determine how you greet a writer. Riley M. shared that in written feedbacks, she will often start with a personal connection with the writer. Anything from an interesting topic, shared professor or class, or even the weather can help create a personal connection to the writer. Danni P. shared that for research papers, she’ll often start her appointment summary by stating that she has learned something from their writing. Sometimes complimenting the writer on anything from their writing to their shoes can be a way to start building rapport and get the appointment rolling.
Context will also always determine whether a greeting continues into further conversation, or whether you just move on and get into the meat of the appointment. If a writer isn’t being responsive to your greeting, it can be assumed they aren’t interested in a conversation on that topic. Also, different modalities will change how people greet and introduce themselves; a receptionist’s greeting will be different from both a face-to-face tutor’s greeting and a tutor’s written feedback greeting.
We hope you’ll be able to incorporate some or any of these tips into your appointments going forward! Greetings are the first impression we give to our writers, and therefore they are crucial to our work as writing center tutors. Watching a writer leave feeling more creative, more productive, and happier…well, we can’t do much better than that as peer tutors! And it all starts with a greeting.