Preparing for your consultation

Here are a few things to do before you meet with your consultant to make sure it's as productive and useful as possible:

Organize your thoughts and try to identify your own goals for a Studio consultation.

Think through your project and try to identify the specific things that you need to work on. The more specific you can be, the more we can help you! Come into the Studio with a list of these items and short term goals for your time with us in the Studio. We'll start our consultation by talking about what you would like to accomplish.

Upload your paper into Google Docs and/or be ready to share your work with your consultant.

Every student has access to Google Docs through their school email. By uploading your text there and sharing it with your consultant, you can both be working in the document at the same time. Check out our Google Docs tutorial here.

If you do not use Google Docs, please make sure you have your writing ready to share with our consultants during the session in another easy-to-access format.

Have the assignment description accessible to share with your consultant.

Whether you're working on an essay or a shorter writing assignment, having your professor's assignment description and instructions will help the consultant see how the professor envisions the assignment and it can help you shape your writing in response to the assignment guidelines. Plus, learning to read complicated assignment descriptions and understanding exactly what your prof wants is an academic skill all in itself -- we're here to help you with that too!

Have your class notes handy.

Notes that you have from class or about the essay are especially helpful during consultation sessions because they can show the progression of your ideas. These often lead to much better essays after the session!