Consulting close to home

Something I've noticed about myself since beginning of this class is that my approach to helping others with writing has changed both in and outside of a writing center setting, but my thoughts on my consulting style haven't been changed as profoundly.

This realization came to me over the last month or so when I helped my brother write his college application essays. Some background first is that our parents have been very insistent that we show them our work before handing it in. This wasn't true so much in high school, but in middle school and prior my mom would check over our math homework. When I applied for colleges, both my parents insisted that they read over my application essays and that I take them everywhere for help. However, I always felt in the back of my mind that this directive approach was too stifling. They were trying to hold our hands through the whole process without allowing us to take a chance, even if it meant some kind of failure might result.

While I never needed much help with my writing, my brother is not as literarily-inclined as I am. When he asked me for help with his application essays, the first "session" over Labor Day break seemed like he expected me to be too directive. He frequently asked me questions like, "What should I say here?" "Does this sound good?" "What else should I say?" It seemed to put me into a conflict with my WC consultant self. Because the "client" was my brother, I felt like it would just be fake and kind of weird to sit back and say, "What do you think you should say?" But on the other hand, if I gave him a sentence and he typed it word-for-word, I felt guilty for producing some of his work for him. Combine that with the fact that this was similar to the style my parents used to help us in, and it made the whole experience strange.

Ultimately, I ended up with a kind of mixture or hybrid of my sister-self and my consultant-self. I tried to ask more questions than I answered (as I pointed out, the essay was about him, not me) but if I could sense my brother getting frustrated, I would be more hands-on and say what I would write out loud.

Obviously this wasn't the best way to run a consulting session, but it makes me understand one reason why writing center consultants aren't allowed to have relationships with the people they are consulting for. It's hard to be an effective consultant when you are close to the client because there is a distinct persona that they view you as, and it can be very difficult to hide that persona when what you really want to do is come out and help that person. It's a situation in which, as a consultant, I felt like it would be easy for my brother to get frustrated with me for not giving him the "answers," and since I know him as well as he knows me, I worried about that much more strongly than I usually would, and it obviously affected my work with him.