"Tell me exactly what it was that I was doing that was so bad": Understanding the Needs and Expectations of Working-Class Students in Writing Centers

Each of these students was a participant in our study of working-class students who use the writing center. They are typical of our interviewees, and they are also typical, in many ways, of the students who visit writing centers across the country. As Beth Boquet (1999) notes, writing centers are arenas in which wider institutional currents become material. In particular, writing centers are places where inequality-unequal access to educational resources-is made manifest. Students like Brandon, Talisha, and Juanita grew up in families and communities where getting a college degree was not the norm and where a college education did not seem entirely necessary. Or at least that was the case in the past, when our students' parents were coming of age. The students we interviewed felt that, anymore, college degrees have become a necessity for anyone who wants to make a decent living, and they were each trying to work toward that goal. But in many ways, working-class students' lives before college have not prepared them for what they encounter on college campuses. And-other side of the same coin-the colleges they attend are not fully prepared for them either. All colleges make implicit assumptions about students-what they need, what they want-but students like our interviewees come with a host of expectations and needs colleges have not fully anticipated.