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 that since I started to work at the Writing Center, I have become more comfortable in approaching and communicating with strangers. In my past experiences, I struggled to participate in and contribute to conversations with people who I did not feel familiar with. Now, I am more socially capable of easily introducing points of conversation when communicating with strangers. I have recognized a very strong connection between this improvement and the work I do at the Writing Center.
After analyzing my roommate’s comment, I concluded that conversation partner appointments have hugely impacted how I socialize. When recalling my very first appointment, it was downright awkward. The appointment was very quiet because I completely lacked knowledge and confidence in having a productive and entertaining conversation with a writer. My struggle was only amplified by the fact that conversation partner appointments typically involve writers who are interested in improving their spoken English skills, which implies that English is not their first language. As a new tutor, these factors associated with conversation partner appointments flared my nerves and painted these types of appointments as intimidating in my newbie mind.
In the process of becoming familiar with conversation partner appointments, I found success in considering the writer as an individual. This train of thought helped me comfortably think of topics of conversation and questions to pose to the writer. In other words, through my experiences with conversation partner appointments, thinking about the writer as a person and not a ‘client’ enabled me to conduct successful conversations.
It was difficult to approach appointments with this casual approach when I was a new employee at the UCWbL, but this approach has proved to be ultimately effective throughout my experiences. Additionally, I found that having a strictly academic conversation with a writer may be limiting in terms of success and depth within a conversation partner appointment. In my experience, considering a writer solely as a student restricts our conversation to being mostly academically based. While academic topics prove applicable during conversation partner appointments, a very effective appointment ideally includes discussion about both academic and personal topics, in my opinion and experiences.