{"id":14519,"date":"2012-11-02T14:18:29","date_gmt":"2012-11-02T18:18:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/?p=14519"},"modified":"2012-11-02T15:03:04","modified_gmt":"2012-11-02T19:03:04","slug":"what-the-writing-centre-really-does","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2012\/11\/02\/what-the-writing-centre-really-does\/","title":{"rendered":"What the Writing Centre Really Does"},"content":{"rendered":"Sometimes after your first year, it feels like the universe stops<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2012\/08\/28\/oh-look-free-things\/\"> offering you free workshops, free pens and free advice.<\/a> I beg to differ.\r\n\r\nI mean it\u2019s not like the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.careers.utoronto.ca\">Career Centre<\/a> disappears into the abyss as you approach your third year (in fact anything but!), and the same applies for everything else offered on campus.\r\n\r\nOne of my personal favourites is the writing centre, but for <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2010\/02\/11\/writing-centres-r-us\/\">reasons other than the obvious<\/a>. While I love that I can flesh out my idea with someone \u2013 who for example may not be a friend that I could get off topic midway with - it\u2019s also a wonderful thing to make sure your ideas are organized. Even with the papers that are making you so excited, it\u2019s easy to get so wrapped up in your sheer glee that you may not be transitioning as well as you could be.\r\n\r\nBut the writing centre also offers so much more, and there are key reasons I especially enjoy using it that I didn\u2019t quite realize before.\r\n\r\n<strong>It keeps you on track<\/strong>\r\n\r\nWhile you can cancel them (warning-demerit points do apply if done a few times!), scheduling an appointment a week before my deadline kick starts my planning. Technically, it forces me to adhere to a deadline that\u2019s actually a week earlier, keeps me from watching the last few episodes of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt1826940\/\">New Girl<\/a> and ensures that I have a proper draft in hand. I mean you could technically cheat and just bring a very rough outline, but then you\u2019d just be wasting even more time with an appointment that you could get so much more out of.\r\n\r\n<em>Tip<\/em>: As soon as you know when an assignment is due, such as getting it in September and knowing it\u2019s due in November, book your appointment! Appointments often fill up <em>fast<\/em>, and this definitely ensures you get a time that works for you.\r\n\r\n<strong>It forces a plan<\/strong>\r\n\r\nAn essay is something that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.writing.utoronto.ca\/advice\">requires planning<\/a>, serious planning. In fact, I had a professor tell me today the average essay should take about 40 hours in total, including all of the time it takes you to research, edit, and so forth. (Personally, the thought of tallying up how long essays take or <em>should <\/em>take kind of worries me, so I try not to keep it numerical). But by knowing that your deadline is a week earlier, and that it may require you to be somewhere you usually don\u2019t head to on your Tuesday afternoons, it makes you figure out when you\u2019re doing what.\r\n\r\n<strong>It\u2019s Convenient <\/strong>\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.writing.utoronto.ca\/writing-centres\/arts-and-science\">Every college offers a writing centre<\/a>, most often located near your college and more than likely somewhere on campus that doesn\u2019t require a huge trek to get to. Also, having several available on campus can help make the entire process more personal. And actually <em>going <\/em>to the appointment is as easy as heading to office hours or an extra tutorial session-easy to schedule in your day, and productive.\r\n\r\nIn simpler words, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.writing.utoronto.ca\/writing-centres\">Writing Centre<\/a> not only helps you with your essays, but I found it really improves the entire process, which after a few panicked writing sessions and groggy eyes, I\u2019ve come to learn isn\u2019t so bad.\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/cuteoverload.com\/2012\/08\/02\/groggy-goggie\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/cuteoverload.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/07\/7559064944_bfbf5b6500_o-1.jpg?w=560&amp;h=420\" alt=\"\" width=\"460\" height=\"320\" \/><\/a><\/p>\r\n- Vahini","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-summary\">\n<div class=\"entry-summary\">\nSometimes after your first year, it feels like the universe stops offering you free workshops, free pens and free advice. I beg to differ. I mean it\u2019s not like the Career Centre disappears into the abyss as you approach your&hellip;\n<\/div><div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2012\/11\/02\/what-the-writing-centre-really-does\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;What the Writing Centre Really Does&rdquo;<\/span>&hellip;<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div><div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2012\/11\/02\/what-the-writing-centre-really-does\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;What the Writing Centre Really Does&rdquo;<\/span>&hellip;<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":162,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7204,6669,1,58,66,67,68],"tags":[78,1191,9454,1432,8,85,54,1431,9455],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14519"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/162"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14519"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14555,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14519\/revisions\/14555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}