Confidence

How it Impacts Your Writing, and How the Writing Center Can Help

By Reese Hargrove

onfidence is a large part of the writing process most individuals employ, whether they realize that or not. You cannot foster a productive writing process without having the faith that you are capable of completing the assignment correctly. To produce high-quality material, you have to BELIEVE that you can produce high-quality material. Oftentimes I have found that when you lack belief in yourself, you do not internally believe that you are capable of producing quality writings. Another aspect of your lacking confidence in your writing is that you are going to make the reader nervous! If you paint a picture of insecurity from the beginning of your work, the readers of this work are not going to believe that you should be the author behind the scenes.

Picture this: You have procrastinated on an assignment for weeks and the due date is suddenly tonight at midnight. You are not confident in your abilities to produce a stand-up piece of work, yet you have allowed yourself to be put in this position. Due to these aspects, you never end up starting the paper, much less finishing it. There goes your grade for the semester. You find yourself wishing that you had taken the opportunity to utilize the writing center.

So, what role does the writing center play in all of this? The writing center serves as a second opinion, in a way. It allows you to have another set of eyes on an assignment you may not feel fully confident about content-wise. Or maybe you do not have the confidence to begin the assignment. This is where the writing center workers come in. The students in the writing center are there for your benefit. They have the desire to help you become a better writer. They are not there to edit your paper for you but to help you become more confident in your current work, as well as your future abilities.

Something important to keep in mind throughout this process: writing center workers are not “gods.” A fellow student once described writing center workers in this manner, and I vividly remember cringing. Every single word that comes out of their mouths is not always correct. Every single piece of advice they give you may not be the best direction to lead you in. However, every word that they say will be said with the best intentions. I can say that these students put a lot of effort into their own papers, and they often have more experience writing than their clients might have. Taking all of this into account, an aspect to remember is that the people in the writing center are FOR you. They want you to have the confidence to complete your assignment on your own. While they love seeing your beautiful faces Monday-Thursday from 7:00-9:15, they want to equip you with the resources to accomplish your future papers on your own.