February 25 - March 1

        While this week ended with a client coming in for a regular session, the vast majority of the week was spent without any - a common occurrence lately. I will admit, with such a drought of students coming into the writing center this semester, at least as opposed to the Fall semester, I'm beginning to run into difficulties with finding topics of discussion for these posts. Perhaps then the best topic to be discussed in the absence of regular writing appointments - for indeed, the appointment that I did get this Friday was just a simple read through that necessitates little mention - is our continued need for advertisement among classrooms to encourage attendance. The problem, as I find it, with the Spring semester, at least for writing center attendance, is that the majority of the appointments from the Fall semester, those being from Freshman, may no longer consider the services of the writing center as fondly as they did when they first arrived. 
        There are a myriad of reasons that I can think of for this: 1) the students feel they have gained the experience they needed after their first semester and no longer need the writing center's support on a regular basis; 2) students that were once offered incentives from professors to go to the writing center may not be receiving them in the Spring semester; 3) and, on a more psychological level, some students simply dislike the idea of talking to a stranger about their writing, which they may already be insecure about. This last point I have heard from multiple people that are either good friends or that I am acquainted with. 
         While I am unsure as to how to increase students' desire to attend the writing center, as there simply is no reason to attend if no help is needed, I will surely bring this topic up again in some future post. 

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