FAQs, Hours & Policies

A consultant answering a student's question.

Fall 2009 Hours:

Monday—Thursday
9:00 AM—7:00 PM (last appointment at 5:45 PM)
Friday
9:00 AM—3:00 PM (last appointment at 1:45 PM)

We will close for the Fall 2009 semester at 7:00 PM on Tuesday, December 8.

Our goal is to encourage you to grow and mature as a writer. A natural part of the writing process for all successful writers is getting expert feedback. We can provide help with stages of your invention and composing processes for all types of writing—academic, professional, and public. We do this through individual consultations in which you work one-on-one with a graduate or undergraduate writing consultant. The Undergraduate Writing Center is partially funded by an undergraduate student fee that you’ve already paid. We’re a great bargain! Come early and come often. We’re a student-centered resource, and we’re ready to help you develop your writing for any rhetorical situation.

Important Policies:

  • Because we are funded by student fees, you must be a UT undergraduate to use the UWC.
  • You can visit once per assignment per day. We can see you a maximum of three times per assignment. These limits ensure that the work you create is really your own.
  • Consultations last forty-five minutes, no longer. Plan accordingly. Education research shows that you and your consultant begin to lose focus at that point. If your consultation goes under forty-five minutes, that’s no problem: we won’t keep you.
  • We cannot assist you if your work is due in less than two hours. You must have time to revise your paper, not just fix a few things and print it. There are no exceptions to this policy.
  • We are not able to provide printing services. Bring a printed draft to your consultation. You can also bring your draft on your laptop or a flash drive. Please ensure that your laptop is fully charged and that the document is in MS Word format. Of course, we can help you develop prewriting skills like brainstorming without a written draft.
  • We will try to set you up with a consultant who specializes in your discipline if you request this. That consultant can give more exact help with disciplinary writing conventions. However, consultants will not tutor you. You do the learning. We help you do the writing.
  • We cannot estimate your grade on a paper. We’re not your instructors and we will not judge or evaluate your writing.
  • All visits are confidential. We’ll only release information about your consultation if you request a note to your professor. Notes only contain a description of the work you did here—we do not evaluate you.
  • At the end of each consultation we will ask you to complete a brief survey. This survey gives us important feedback so that we can continue to improve the quality of our work. We appreciate your feedback.

Tips for A Successful Consultation:

  • You will be a full and active partner in the consultation and revision process. You will have the opportunity to learn how to take ownership of your writing and your learning.
  • Bring along all materials related to your assignment: your instructor’s assignment sheet, the course syllabus, the text or texts you’re writing about, the most recent draft of your paper, any earlier drafts and notes, and instructor and peer comments on your draft, if you have them. Also bring an open mind, a willingness to push yourself as a writer, a recognition that writing is a process and not just a product, and lots of questions. You can come to the UWC before you get started on the actual drafting of your paper to work on invention—brainstorming, clarifying the assignment, and choosing among possible writing topics.
  • Look over your instructor’s assignment sheet and your draft before you come to the UWC. If you’ve already started drafting, know your central claim. Have a clear idea of your instructor’s expectations and grading criteria. The audience for and purpose of a paper are always important considerations; you need to consider them early in your invention and composing process.
  • Be as specific as you can about your concerns, and communicate those concerns to the consultant. If you know you have trouble generating ideas, developing ideas, organizing ideas, revising your sentences, or resolving particular grammatical or citation issues, don’t say you “need to work on everything.” We can better serve you if we focus on specific issues that concern you as a writer—not just in this one paper but generally. We can direct you to additional resources (reference materials, databases, handbooks, etc.) so that you can keep working on your writing process after the consultation is over.

What NOT to Expect:

  • A proofreading service (but we’ll teach you how to proofread your own work!).
  • A quick fix, a grading service, or a miracle.

FAQs

Who can use the UWC?

Anyone who is enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of Texas at Austin can use our services.
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Does the writing that I bring have to be for class?

No. We’re happy to work with you on any type of writing you have, from poetry to transfer applications.
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How much does it cost?

A part of the undergraduate student fee goes to support our services. You’ve already paid for our services and can come as many times as you like.
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Do I have to fill out an intake form every time I come in?

We ask you to fill out a new form each time you visit because you may be working on a different project than your last visit. If you are working with a different consultant than before, your new consultant will also need some information about you and the writing that you’re doing.
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My paper is due in just under two hours. It’s a really short paper. Can I still get someone to look over it?

No. If the consultation process from start to finish lasts about an hour (accounting for checking in and your consultation), you’ll only have an hour to revise your paper. This isn’t enough time to make substantive changes to your draft and to think about what you’ve discussed in the consultation.
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Why am I asked to check out after each consultation? What is the survey info used for?

The evaluation we ask you to fill out at the end of your consultation gives us feedback to help us improve our services. Your responses are completely anonymous and used internally to monitor the quality of what we do.
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Is the UWC open on weekends?

We are not currently open at weekends. Our online consulting program Virgil (named for the Roman poet who was Dante’s guide through hell) was created as a way to get writing advice after-hours. This interactive website offers support in a “choose-your-own-adventure” approach modeled on our writing consultation process. Virgil will guide you through specific suggestions tailored for your paper. If we’re closed, visit Virgil.
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When is the UWC busiest?

As a rule of thumb, when you’re busy with work, we will be busy. We are quieter at the beginning of the semester and get very busy towards the end. Peak times include before and after Thanksgiving and spring break, around midterms, and the last four weeks of the semester.
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Do I have to have an appointment to visit?

No. We’re happy to accept walk-in appointments, but bear in mind that there may be a wait at busy times. We always recommend making appointments as it saves you time by getting you into a consultation quicker.
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How far in advance do I need to schedule an appointment?

As far in advance as possible. When you know you would like to come, please call. We can normally fit you in at your desired timeslot about two to three days in advance but our appointments fill up very quickly at busy periods.
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Can I request a specific consultant? Do I have to make an appointment in advance with a specific consultant in order to be paired up with them?

You may request to work with a specific consultant. We require that you make an appointment in advance to ensure that the consultant is available at the time you want to come in.
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I’m working on a paper for a specific class. Do you have a consultant who specializes in what I’m doing?

We usually can set you up with a consultant with expertise in your field on your request and subject to availability. Our consultants are trained to be neutral readers, so even if you aren’t working with someone who is an expert in your field, our consultant will be able to work with you on improving your writing.
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I hear you don’t work with grammar. Is this true?

No. We’re happy to work with grammar, punctuation and sentence-level concerns. The word “grammar” is often used as a catch-all term to describe unclear writing, and many people who describe themselves as “bad at grammar” often have other areas of their work that are unclear such as the thesis statement. While good mechanics are very important to an essay, our consultants will draw your attention to broader structural concerns that are inhibiting their understanding of your essay, as well as working on sentence-level issues. We won’t correct all of your grammatical errors; we’ll draw your attention to them and give tips for avoiding these errors in the future.
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What should I bring to a consultation?

Bring all of the drafts that you’ve been working on and any assignment sheets and instructor’s comments you might have. It might also be useful to generate a list of questions or goals for the session.
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Can you let my instructor know that I visited?

Yes. Upon your request, we send a brief, non-evaluative email to your instructor describing what we worked on. If you would like this note sending to your TA, please write their name and email address on your form. We do not automatically send notes to professors. Our consultants should ask you at the end of the consultation if you want a note to be sent.
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Can I bring my laptop or an electronic copy of my document?

You can also bring your draft on your laptop or a flash drive. Please ensure that your laptop is fully charged and that the document is in MS Word format. We may have difficulty reading the new MS Word 2007 (.docx extension), so please save your work as a .doc file.
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Why do consultations last a maximum of forty-five minutes?

We feel that forty-five minutes is a good length of time for us to work together on one or several aspects of your writing. After about forty-five minutes of work, attentions start lagging and both the consultant and student can lose focus. As we see over 11,500 student visits a year, we also feel that forty-five minute sessions are a fair way of giving all students the opportunity to use our services.
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How many times can I bring in my assignment?

We will see you three times total per assignment. After three sessions, we’re confident that you’ll be able to go and revise your work on your own.
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I’ve worked on my paper with a consultant today. Can I have someone else look over it?

We will work on an assignment once per day. If you come in on Monday, for example, the next time we could see you for that particular paper would be Tuesday. If you have a different assignment to work on we will be happy to see you again on the same day.
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Will you copyedit my paper?

We do not provide a copyediting services because we don’t do your work for you. We like to say that we won’t proofread your work: we’ll teach you how to proofread. Our time spent together is much more productively spent helping you understand how to approach this work.
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Can you estimate my grade after our session?

Your instructor is the person who grades your work and we cannot assign a grade or evaluate your performance related to your class. Our work in the session is designed to make your writing clearer and ensure that you are meeting your own goals as a writer.
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Can I drop my paper off and come back for it later?

No: you have to be present in a consultation. These are collaborative environments where you’ll be doing the work on your paper.
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I have a really long paper to work on. Will we get through it all?

There’s no hard and fast rule about how much of a paper we can discuss in a session, but bear in mind that five page papers can take up to ten minutes to read. If you have a long paper, select sections that you’d most like to work on and come with questions about these.
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Where can I print my paper before I come?

The FAC computer labs offer printing services. Here is a list of FAC printing locations.
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Where can I go for additional ESL help/training?

Please visit our ESL Writers page.
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How do I become a consultant?

Undergraduates are trained as consultants in a one-semester course offered by the Department of Rhetoric and Writing (RHE 368C: Writing Center Internship-W) and then apply for positions with us. Graduate students may apply directly to the UWC. We provide ongoing training to all consultants.
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Further Information

For further information, contact the Program Coordinator, Lisa Leit: coordinator@mail.utexas.edu or our Director, Peg Syverson: syverson@uts.cc.utexas.edu.