The goal of a writing center visit is to help you develop a plan for revision, not to perform that revision. In a short portion of the paper, or a quick structural and organizational scan, a trained peer tutor can determine with you what you will need to focus on when you revise your paper.

Since the goal of a Writing Center visit is to identify what stage of revision is next, and not to proofread the paper, a 30-45-minute session is all that is necessary and will be surprisingly helpful. There are more than 500 peer tutoring sessions each term, so we must limit the duration of each session so all students have equal access to the Center.

After one session, you can make an appointment for another session after significantly revising the paper along the lines you and your peer tutor have discussed.

Not exactly, but we can do something better. We help you recognize patterns of mechanical errors in your writing and provide brief instruction on grammatical topics. If we proofread your paper, you wouldn't learn how to do it yourself.

While each discipline has specific forms of writing, academic writing is fairly consistent from discipline to discipline. Most academic writing shares basic structural components of logic and readability. Obscure subject matters, in almost all cases, are not a hindrance to benefiting from a Writing Center session. What's more, the Writing Center staff has a diverse range of majors.

Writing Center tutors will never make a prediction about your grade. Since they are not grading your paper, they have no way of knowing how someone else will evaluate your work. Grades are determined by your professor or instructor.

A writing referral is a way of formalizing a number of visits to the Center. The referral helps identify  specifics that your professor believes will benefit your writing the most.

No. Visits to the Center are limited only by tutor availability and the Center's schedule. You can visit as many times a term as you like; however, you are allowed only one visit per "revision cycle." In other words, after you have a session with a tutor on a paper, you cannot come back with that same paper until you have executed the revisions identified during the session.

Talk with the director to see if there's another tutor on staff who might be better suited to your ways of working.

One possible reason is you are choosing your appointments incorrectly. Pay particular attention to the day and time you sign up for. Another likely reason is your google calendar is not set to Eastern Time zone.