By Writing Assistant Isadora Baughman
The start of a semester is full of new: new pencils, new schedules, and new classes. Maybe you’re a just-declared Psychology major with your first ever APA style lab report. Or you’re in a Spanish Literature course and realize you have to write an entire paper in Spanish! What are you going to do? Can the Writing Center help with specific writing style questions? Yes, we can!
The first step is to make an appointment. There are multiple ways to make an appointment but the easiest is to do so online. If you go to our Klooster Center for Excellence in Writing website page (https://hope.edu/offices/klooster-center/), you’ll see a box that says, ‘Make an Appointment.’ If you click on that, an appointment form will pop up asking you to fill in information like your name, what class the paper is for, and who your professor is. The most important part of the form, however, is the last part which says, ‘More Information.’ Here, we ask you to let us know about the nature of the paper and what you are looking for help with. This is also where you can say you want to work with a Writing Assistant on a specific citation style like APA or a language like Spanish. You can even request to work with a Writing Assistant who’s in the same major as you or someone you know that works there!
All the information you put down in the last part of the form is super helpful to the Writing Assistants scheduling appointments. That way, if they see a student needs help with a draft of a paper in French or Chicago style, they can try their best to pair them with a Writing Assistant who specializes in that area.
Does it always happen? No, if we’re being honest. I know I have gotten appointments for Biology lab reports and as a Psychology/English person I have to say, “I’m not a Bio major but we’re going to work together on this!” All of the Writing Assistants, no matter what their major, want to help the students who come in for appointments. If we don’t know something, say about MLA style, we have books or websites we’ll reference or even ask other Writing Assistants questions. We might ask you questions. We’ll probably ask you a bunch of questions. But even if the appointment ends and there is still something you can’t figure it out about the style of your paper, there are always websites, librarians, or professors to seek guidance from as well.
Writing is hard enough besides navigating rules that come with certain styles of writing. Even though writing in APA style or Spanish may be daunting for the first time, Writing Assistants at the Klooster Center want to help you learn those styles and gain new writing skills. I remember going to the Center for my first APA style paper because I wanted to make sure I did not miss anything. The Writing Assistant was helpful and caught things I forgot or missed in my paper. So, making an appointment about the style of your paper never hurts to have another pair of eyes look it over!