Picture this: It’s Monday afternoon. You’ve completed most of your classes for the day and were given your normal assignments--end of chapter problems, reading responses, etc. You arrive to your last class of the day. You sit down thinking that everything will be fine--just your typical lecture and you’ll be on your way. But your professor comes to the front of the classroom and their first announcement is: You have a 5 page essay due by the end of the week at midnight. No exceptions.
You sit there in your seat wondering how could this be?? How did you not see this coming? You could’ve sworn it wasn’t on the syllabus schedule! The only plausible explanation would be that your professor is obviously trying to make life harder for you! Knowing well that you have plenty of homework assignments from other classes, including this one, and they must get a kick out of seeing college students suffer! Ok, that last point is a bit of an exaggeration, but nonetheless, that’s how we all feel, right?
But now is not the time to be kicking yourself! You need to start coming up with a game plan for how to tackle this paper! Because if you were to divy up your time, to ensure that all other assignments are completed on time, outside responsibilities are taken care of, and achieve optimum sleep for a college student...you should’ve been planning this essay 3 days ago!!!
And as if matters couldn’t get any worse, you take a look at the writing prompt, and despite the fact that you are going through the good ol’ college student early life crisis, you can’t seem to understand what is being asked of you. Are you supposed to argue a point? Make your own stance on an opinion? A Shakespearean Sonnet?? Who knows??? And to rub some more salt into the wound, the professor states that they won’t take the class time to explain the details of the prompt since it was explained on syllabus day, but will happily explain during their office hours.
But wait--You can’t attend their office hours. You have work later that afternoon, and God forbid if you were to skip work, because as every broke college student would say “every penny counts!”. But you really need to get a start on the paper because you definitely don’t want to cut into your sleep schedule and start skipping out on that healthy 3-4 hours every college student needs to keep from going insane!
Oh what would a college student like you do in such a dilemma?? But wait! Midway through your angst, you realize you always have the CWC! You realize that you could always pay them a visit and they could help you out with this assignment! But you pause, deep in thought:
And that answer is
!!! You certainly DON’T need to have a draft prepared beforehand in order for us to work with you! That’s why we have special conferences we conduct just for these situations: Brainstorming Conferences!
Brainstorming Conferences are specifically tailored to help students in the beginning of the writing process, whether or not you know what you want to talk about! During these conferences, we can talk about what your professor expects from you in your paper, what type of approach you want to take, what ideas you have, as well as help you generate more, and any additional concerns you may have, all over a free cup of coffee or tea along with a Jolly Rancher or two!
So don’t fret over that assignment quite yet; remember there’s a whole team of people eager to help you through your writing journey, whether or not you planned for it or if the professor wanted to add an “impromptu” essay to the curriculum!
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