Get Inspired!

Check out what others are saying about their experience at the Writing Studio.

You can also read former consultants’ reflections on working at the Writing Studio.

My consultant was very helpful in giving me constructive ways to reorganize and therefore make my argument clear.

My consultant really helped me see the purpose of each section and how I am/am not supporting that.

My consultant helped me take the complexity and significance a step further.

The consultant was wonderful and would make me talk about what exactly it is I wanted to say in certain parts of the paper–this was very beneficial because I realized it was difficult sometimes to articulate it!

She took the ideas I had and helped me improve them without changing the message I was trying to convey.

He was very good with working with me to figure out what I was aiming at and where the evidence in my paper was leading me.

It was very productive, and he made it so I had to participate and think of the ideas of how to revise my paper myself. It really helped me!

He was patient while I talked on-and-on and tried to figure out what I was saying. His ability to follow all the various strands of thought I threw at him and reflect them back to me in a cogent way was amazing.

My consultant has helped me to: better organize my thoughts; look at my arguments from different angles; temper my writing when it got too polemical.

He was more than a constructive critic of my writing and organization; he really helped me think through the arguments I have been trying to make.

We had intellectual dialogue!

He pushed me to think more deeply about my analysis.

She was really good at providing direction but still let me be the one writing.

He helped me come up with arguments from my ideas.

This past semester I had the opportunity to work with a consultant on my senior honors thesis. I could not have done the amount of writing I did at the level at which I did it without her committed guidance. Our weekly sessions were essential to the steady progress of my work. Each chapter had its own focus and sub-argument, but what my consultant really helped me to accomplish was connecting the sub-arguments of my chapters into an overarching claim for the whole project. She apprehended from the beginning that I had certain critical intentions for my project and so challenged me with questions that directed my attention toward areas where my critiques were weak or ungrounded in textual or historical evidence. Having another’s critical eye on my work during the writing process made me more conscious of how much more precise my writing needed to become in order to communicate effectively with an academic reading audience.
He allowed me to do most of the talking and gave me specific suggestions based on my own words. He was very engaged in the entire process and supremely helpful!
As a doctoral candidate, I feel like I should know how to write already. I have been completing assignments, papers, a qualifying exam, and even a dissertation proposal on my own. However, when I sat down to actually write my dissertation, I was overwhelmed. Over the past semester, I have met weekly with my consultant, as we have worked our way through the first three chapters of my dissertation. All semester I have looked forward to meeting with her because I know that our time together will be productive, and move me forward as I work towards completing my dissertation. In addition to being a safe place for me to share my writing, I have also learned more about myself as a writer.

I am a Ph.D. student at the stage of writing my dissertation. This semester I have had weekly appointments at the Writing Studio with a Graduate Writing Consultant Extraordinaire! Some weeks, I send her a piece of writing to read; then, we spend our time together going over specific editing concerns. Other weeks, I come with a piece of writing that we read aloud and edit as we go. She has even helped me brainstorm ideas for organizing a new chapter. In each type of consulting, we are both active participants in the editing. We work hard and have fun, too! I always leave the Writing Studio grateful, encouraged by my progress, and inspired to go home and keep writing! I now highly recommend the Writing Studio to all of my friends who desire a better writing process and finished product!
Each week I look forward to the two hours I get to spend with my writing consultant. These sessions have become an integral part of my writing process. What she presses me to think about stays with me as I revise my writing on my own.

My consultations at the Writing Studio have been a valuable resource in writing my dissertation. The main focus of the work during the sessions was to clarify my wordings and ensure that I was not missing any logical steps in explanations. My consultant did a great job of pointing out areas that were unclear, and working with me to determine how to make the wording more directed. In the past month I have also uncovered the biggest reward I have gotten from my Writing Studio sessions. I have been able to internalize the corrections for the most common problems with my writing, and my writing has begun to improve before my sessions!

I was very glad to be able to have multiple extended appointments with a consultant as I worked on my major area paper throughout the semester. It saved both of us time to not have to re-explain the content each session. I had more time to focus on organizing and prioritizing the material. Furthermore, it was useful to have somebody from outside my field relate his perceptions of the content. My familiarity with my project had led to explanations that were not always clear enough for a general reading audience. Reading it with a consultant helped me immensely, as he provided both helpful editorial and stylistic suggestions and needed motivation to get the hard work done.
I just wanted to express my thanks and gratitude for all the great work the Writing Studio has been doing. I applied to business schools in the fall and I was able to develop great products and I was eventually admitted to MBA programs at Harvard, Wharton, Stanford. Thanks for all the help!

The Writing Studio has saved my dissertation. For almost a year, I have had regular two-hour weekly meetings with my consultant to work through dissertation chapters. Sometimes we hash out ideas, sometimes we talk about broad-strokes global organization, but, for the most part, we slog through one paragraph, one sentence, at a time. I needed this attention to detail. I needed someone to sit down with me and think about very basic things like topic sentences, sentence style and clarity, thesis statements, and paragraph coherence. In the process of working through these basic writing principles, my ideas have become clearer, and I’ve finally discovered what my project is about and why it’s worth doing. I’ve rediscovered the confidence I once had in my writing.

Extended appointments at the Writing Studio helped me to finish my dissertation on time. Thanks to my writing consultant, I now have a defense scheduled and will graduate in May. The consultant and I worked on two difficult chapters. My professor asked me to write a chapter that I had not envisioned for my dissertation. The chapter required me to complete a broad survey of literature. With the help of the Writing Studio, I improved this chapter by better introducing narratives. Overall, the sessions brought greater clarity to my project. We also worked on my final chapter as I attempted to tie up some loose ends. When I turned in the chapter, my adviser gave me positive feedback and only suggested a correction or addition here and there. I was very pleased to receive excellent help and suggestions from the Writing Studio at this critical stage in the process.

I would highly recommend the Writing Studio to anyone working on a dissertation. In fact, I would encourage advisers to make their students aware of this service. The Writing Studio helped me to alleviate fears and expedite the dissertation writing process.

In a short period of time, my colleague has helped me immensely with my book project. She looked at what I had gathered already and suggested how she saw the direction that my project might be heading. Her intuitive questions were amazing based on many factors, including the fact that I had not gotten a copy to her of my project before our first meeting. Her very thoughtful listening and her carefully crafted questions helped me to see some of the strengths and weaknesses of my project. I would say, looking back, that our conversations were the best kind of collaboration, in that I am not sure who came up with some of the solutions we arrived at in terms of structuring text and images to be dynamic on the page and get at the heart of my academic goals. In some instances her questions helped me to see where I could re-work aspects of my project, and in some cases she made suggestions that she felt would clarify my layout of the material. I feel as though our meetings were a real give and take that led to a very fruitful and positive outcome. Together we developed a clearer direction for me to head in than I had before, and that already has been a huge help in re-working my entire project.

My consultant has generously given of her time and experience to help me sharpen my written expression as my project moves from dissertation to book…Through her comments, I have noticed trends and tendencies in my own writing, and awareness of these tendencies allows me to make my writing clearer, whether I am simply revising or crafting new material.

I am writing this to offer my gratitude to the incredible work that all members of the Writing Studio provide. As a post-doctoral fellow, my sessions sharpened my book manuscript in profound ways. Through these writing sessions, there were productive paradigmatic shifts in how I approached the material and I found my voice through my consultant’s suggestions. The time at the Writing Studio has been very beneficial and now it helps me as I grade papers from my undergraduate students. I now have a tool kit with which to assist my students. Finally, I highly recommend the Writing Studio to all my students, both graduate and undergraduate. As a faculty member, the Writing Studio has been such a great professional asset.