Today I went to the Learning Center at Penn State for the first time. In high school, I utilized our writing center for my college essay, but that was just one occasion. I hope to attend the Learning Center many times throughout these four years.

I scheduled my appointment with a tutor named Mark, who was enthusiastic and engaging when reviewing my Critical Reading assignment. He told me to read the paper aloud to him, which caught me by surprise because I thought we were going to look over it together. However, I found this technique beneficial because I could pick out changes to sentences I needed to make, and marked them down on my essay accordingly.

Some key points I took away from our meeting is eliminating some of the repetition of words and phrases. Finding synonyms and other ways to structure sentences helps with the flow of my essay, which sounded like a jumble of words as I was reading. We also focused on building a stronger conclusion that wraps up my thoughts in an organized way. This appointment helped me get a feel for how the tutors break down essays, as well as prepared me for future meetings in the Learning Center!