In my first year at Puget Sound, I was drawn to the Center for Writing and Learning (CWL), where students could seek help from their peers on any subject, including their essays. I eagerly signed up to work with writing advisors who would read my papers and give me feedback on structure, tone, citations, and more — or just help me brainstorm if I was feeling stuck.
I was thrilled to get a job there as a sophomore, first as a French tutor and then — by my junior year — as a writing advisor. I could not have anticipated how holistically the CWL would change my life. In our first semester as employees, tutors were required to take an additional course that taught us about potential internal biases, ways of learning, and methods or meeting people where they are in their academic journeys so that we could best serve as many students as possible. The class was eye-opening for me, forcing me to examine my own privileges and imagine how I might use them to create a more equitable world.
The time I spent working in the CWL introduced me to so many brilliant peers. We would shut ourselves into the center late into the night, mostly studying but also talking about vectors and books and how operating in a non-native language felt like accessing another version of your personality. It connected me to students who spoke English as a second language; I worked with several while simultaneously doing research on how liberal arts colleges can better support their international populations. Helping other people with their writing and their French strengthened my own. Seeing my peers’ thought processes opened my mind to other ways of looking at things. The lessons I learned continue to serve and inform me every day, eight years after graduating.
When I think about my college experience, it’s the CWL that I remember most fondly: the friends I made there, the way it asked me continually to expand, and how I was guided and mentored. In that space, I was coaxed into being a whole person and student and global citizen, consistently across three years. And isn’t that what the liberal arts experience is all about?
Zoe Branch ’18 is a Brooklyn-based poet, essayist, and journalist. She makes a living primarily by writing custom, on-the-spot poems for strangers on a typewriter, which she does on the street, at events, and on the internet. She publishes a regular newsletter, Due Regards, and co-hosts a weekly poetry and comedy podcast, Poking Around.
