I work here at the writing center. A "writer's consultant" is the title they have given me, just a nice name for the underpaid tutor who works with the freshman composition students. Saddled with various pitfalls, the junior college, where I do most of my consulting, which feeds Texas A&M University, one of the largest agricultural think tanks in the world, has repeatedly amazed me. Much of our time and energy in the writing center is hopefully spent for the purpose of "making better writers," our proud motto emblazoned across the top of our dry erase board. Rather, it seems we are law enforcers of a kind.

Not surprisingly, most of the students which breeze through the door are not ziners, or bloggers, or newspaper writers, or short literature authors, or anything else exiting that has to do with careful word choice. A large portion of these students may not have any desire to be in school, and yet they are here, either because they are not ready to face the world of life-after-high-school-without-a-bachelors-degree or for the purpose of soaking up financial aid and then wringing it out steadily each weekend. Not all of the students I have seen are this way, but it is certainly a rare exception when a student arrives with innovative ideas spilling off the page. Instead paper after paper is sloughed across my tutorial desk, and I am told to "read over it; see if it's good". To date, I've received exactly 240 papers on abortion, 404 papers on affirmative action, and 220 papers on racial profiling. Oh yeah, and there was that one about an all-in-one nutrition bar designed to eliminate world hunger.

The problem it seems, is that these students really believe that they have little, if not nothing, original to contribute to the ongoing rhetorical discussion. For all the conventions good academic writing is expected to contain, at least in these classrooms, there is little talk about what really makes a quality piece of writing. How can we teach students that they must follow such and such a rule, when employing devices such as words to convey meaning, which are extremely volatile and subjective, is the primary means of our communication?

I'm not advocating that we retract all of our useful tools in teaching writers to put their thoughts into something more intelligible. But as in any art form, good writing must be inspired and coaxed (sometimes crushed) from the author, but not by placing them inside a maze of helpful hints.