A forgotten number of days ago I was sitting in an anonymous bar throwing back pints of Fat Tire when a cheery fellow sat down beside me. After an hour of drunken gibberish, I gathered that he was a student at ITT Technical Institute with a major in physics. As he described his fondness of mathematics, my ears became full of sophisticated terminology that entered then passed through my now-aching mind like traffic through a tunnel.

But then he began describing his English class. Apparently, his English instructor was expecting an essay from him the following week and he didn’t know how to even start it.

“I know what I need to say, I just don’t know how to say it or in what order,” he told me.
Being an English major, I saw my opportunity to help out a fellow student. “Look at the essay as a formula,” I said to him, “essay= opening statement + supporting information cubed (at least three) + closing statement.”

His eyes widened and his mouth gaped open as an imaginary light bulb lit up above his head.

“That’s it!” he said, “that makes sense!”

I felt good at that moment, and not just because of all the beer. I actually helped someone that no one else could help (at least nobody that he talked to).

Since then, I have made it a mission for the Writers’ Club to serve the school by offering advice on English and writing assignments. As it stands right now, we can only offer advice to those who show up during our regular meetings, but I’m hoping to expand on that. In the following weeks I will be talking to the tutoring department about if and how we could expand our services to students to include personal tutoring and a spot on the Writers’ Club website where students can submit questions about writing and English, and get useful tips and advice back from English/creative writing majors and English department advisers.

But really, we need the students of this college to give us suggestions on how we could be more accessible and more helpful to them. We all have our talents and weaknesses. As students struggling to start our careers, it would be in everybody’s interest if we help each other out. The Writers’ Club is here to support and to give help on writing. All we ask in return is a little help with our math assignments.