Editor’s note: We would like to thank Anika Kalra, University of Pennsylvania, for providing this piece. If you would like to share your writing center’s experience during COVID-19, please submit via WLN.

                           Anika Kalra

I remember coming home for spring break the first week of March and seeing universities all over the country calling for students to pack up their bags and leave. I kept thinking, ​There’s no way it would happen to me​. It feels so distant now, but I remember the biggest question in my head at the time was ​Who would I ask to Date Night?​ By the end of that week, being a resident in the ​epicenter ​in Queens, NYC, the question had become ​How do I stay safe?

As classes shifted online and students enrolled in the running joke of Zoom University, it began to sink in. My house felt extra full with my dog, both of my parents, and my older sister, who had moved back home after being laid off. As I struggled to find a quiet place to work, I missed my campus library’s Moelis Reading Room as my work space and safe haven. After all, it had the perfect table to chair height ratio, floor to ceiling windows, and soft lighting. Further, as an avid user of my university’s writing center, I missed my homebase. In the fall, I would walk into a writing center space that was full of brightly colored walls, bold patterned furniture, and tall windows streaming in views of Locust Walk, the University of Pennsylvania’s main campus street. The teal walls comforted me as I chattered away with a tutor, working through the writing process.

When March hit, my tutee experiences changed. I would instead sit at my bedroom desk, open a new tab on Safari, and log on to WCOnline. WCOnline was always used as our scheduling system, but now it became the new homebase of our tutoring appointments as well. As we could no longer collaborate sitting side-by-side, we instead collaborated through a shared screen.

After many months back in my overachiever high-school bedroom, slower pace of life, and more time with my own thoughts, I have tangibly realized how much spatial orientation affects me in all capacities as a student and writer. While at first only seeing a tutor through the WCOnline system’s feed—an approximately 2” by 3” rectangle— was frustrating, with practice, I was able to effectively communicate and work collaboratively with the tutor to discuss writing practices and techniques in sessions.

From the tutee perspective, here are some of the strategies I implemented to make the adjustment from face-to-face tutoring to online tutoring work for me as a writer: First, I came prepared with my materials and an action plan. For the digital world, this meant having assignment instructions, my current outline or draft, and any questions open on my screen. Next, I made some adjustments to stay engaged and listen through a screen by muting my phone and laptop notifications, minimizing extraneous tabs and windows, and always having a glass of water next to me. Further, I conscientiously used more reactionary dialogue and stronger facial expressions in compensation for the limited view. While this required more energy, it made my online conversations more satisfying.

Similarly, here are some of the strategies the tutors I worked with implemented to make the adjustment from face-to-face tutoring to online tutoring work for me as a writer: To begin the session, the tutor checked in with me to get a sense of my personality, interests, and overall, to develop a relationship. Some of my best in-person sessions were the ones where I connected with my tutors on common extracurriculars or passions, building my trust and comfort into the session. Next, after the informal greeting, the tutor helped me set up attainable goals for the session based on where I was in the writing process. Lastly, similar to the tutee perspective, the tutors focused on communication through effective dialogue and facial expressions.

As an incoming writing tutor, I know this pandemic has developed, and will continue to develop, my emotional intelligence so I can still create and engage in a space of rich peer-to-peer learning. As I look to the coming fall semester, not without apprehension, I know that taking virtual classes, digitally participating in extracurriculars, and tutoring in our online writing center will give me the opportunity to grow as an active listener, engaged student and tutor, and communicator.

Based on my experiences as a writer coming to the Center, I am looking forward to the fall when, through this spatial change, I will take what I have learned to the other side of the screen.