By Samantha Smith
Finals season is around the corner and the Writing Center at Youngstown State University is offering help for students.
The Writing Center is located in both the William F. Maag Jr. Library and Stambaugh Stadium. Ryan Teets, consultant for the Writing Center, ex what the center is and how it can help students with any writing needs.
“The Writing Center is the place you can come to get some writing support. If you’re having any problems with formatting or grammar — things like that — come in and we can give you a consultation and kind of help you improve your score,” Teets said.
Eden Lesnansky, consultant for the Writing Center, said the center can help with different forms of writing.
“We work with any sort of writing project that you may have like poetry, writing labs, anything like that,” Lesnansky said. “You can come down for free and sit with a tutor and we kind of go over whatever you have with you.”
The center will not have extra hours for finals, but will be open through finals week. Angela Messenger, coordinator of the Writing Center, said the hours will be posted for students for finals.
“We don’t have any specific, like extra hours this particular semester in terms of moving towards finals,” Messenger said. “I will let everyone know that we will be posting a finals schedule, so we will still be open during finals week. If students are working on last minute projects that involve writing that would be graded, any subject.”
Lesnansky said she has already helped a few clients with papers for their finals.
“I’ve already worked with a couple of clients on specific papers that they know that they’re gonna have to write for a final,” Lesnansky said. “I had a client come in and ask to write a sample, a little bit of something that he knew he’d have to write on his final. Just so I can kind of look over and give him any pointers, especially with structure.”
The Writing Center takes appointments and walk-ins, but walk-ins are on a first come, first serve basis. Appointments can be in person or online. Messenger explained what the online appointments are.
“The online appointments can also be asynchronous. There’s something called the distance-edu-tutor and that person does the remote appointments where a student, at that point, has to be at the stage where they have something for us to look at. Then, it’s a two business day turnaround,” Messenger said.
Messenger said it’s best for students to start their writing sooner than later.
“There’s only a few weeks left, but you don’t want to try to write a paper the night before it’s due. I know it’s tempting, the best procrastinators in all of us, but you’re gonna thank yourself if you get your research done and have a couple of visits leading up to your due date rather than trying to get it all done at the end,” Messenger said.
The center is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Friday and 4 to 7 p.m. on Sunday.
For more information about the Writing Center, visit its webpage.
