In the fall of 2019, I began my first semester with the Agnes Scott College Center for Writing and Speaking. Besides my regular tutoring hours spent in collaboration with students from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines, I was assigned to the Workshop Committee.
The Workshop Committee at Agnes Scott develops and presents educational curriculum on behalf of the college to supplement students’ writing and speaking skills. Topics range from “Writing Across Borders,” a session devoted specifically to international students, to “Back to the Future,” a workshop designed to help graduate students and seniors develop their cover letter and resume-writing skills. In my first few weeks, however, we decided to launch an ambitious new project: a set of workshops that would take students back to the basics. In this three part series, we covered basic grammar points (commas, subject-verb agreement, and the unfairly despised semicolon), thesis statements and topic development, and analysis by discipline. These events required over a month and a half of extensive planning, took place over the span of three weeks, and eventually reached over 50 undergraduate and graduate students.
