advice

You’re sitting in your little wooden cubicle at the corner of an office. Your laptop is open in front of you; a picture of a black cat stares at you. Its lime-green eyes look into yours.

You maximize your Microsoft Word document. It’s blindingly white.

You lean back on your soft green office chair and sigh. You spin around, facing away from your cubicle. You look at the clock on the white wall to your left: 3:55PM.

You notice that you are bouncing your right leg.

At the beginning of the Fall 2015 term, many first year students wrote the English Language Proficiency Exam (ELPE). The results are now in! If you have not received an email in your UWaterloo email drop box, please contact elpp@uwaterloo.ca. Here are some answers to questions you may have:

Long, long ago when I was young and dependent, my parents would nag about the state of my bedroom: it rarely met their standards of tidy. I would challenge their unrealistic ideals by questioning them. When this failed to help my cause I would shove everything under the bed.

Why do my clothes need to be put away? I’m going to wear them eventually; why must the bed be made? I’ll be sleeping in it again, tonight; who am I hurting? Why does this “who” care?

One of the things we do at the Writing Centre is show you the tools available online that can help you develop your writing skills. Here are ten of my favourites.

Using a Pen to Get Past Writer’s Block

As I sit staring at my laptop, little black characters march neatly across the screen.