Working on your dissertation can feel daunting or lonely, but The Writing Center is here to help!
If you’re a doctoral student from any school working on any stage of your dissertation (or your Area Statement, if you are a Brown School doctoral student), a Dissertation Mentorship with The Writing Center might be a good fit for you. Through this program, you can meet with one of our professional writing tutors on a regular basis throughout the semester. During these weekly or every-other-week meetings, you can focus on longer, more complex projects alongside a tutor who is already familiar with your topic and goals.
Mentorship meetings have a lot in common with our general tutoring sessions with graduate students. They are one-on-one, last roughly 50 minutes, take place in-person or online, and can concentrate on any part of the writing process from brainstorming to final revisions. If you do have drafted materials, we can typically read and discuss about 8-10 pages in a session. The two main distinctions between regular tutoring appointments and the mentorship program are 1) that we schedule repeating appointments for you for the duration of the semester and 2) that the mentorship program offers a more intentional focus on accountability and setting achievable goals. Most mentorships begin in the second week of the semester, depending on mentor and mentee availability.
Like all our services, participation in this program is free. However, space is limited.
Applications are closed for the Fall 2024 term. The application form for the Spring 2025 term will open on December 3, 2024.
What people are saying:
“ [My mentor] has given me a lot of valuable feedback and helped me keep up my morale as I work on my prospectus. In addition, the structure of the mentorship program has helped create accountability structures for my writing. At the end of each session, [my mentor] and I think through my writing goals for the next meeting. This has made writing more manageable by giving me smaller, week-by-week chunks to focus on, and knowing that I have a meeting every week has helped motivate me to stay on track. . . . I actually managed to finish a full draft through this program!”
Fall 2024 mentee
“This is the best program! I love having accountability and knowing I will get non-judgmental notes on my writing/ help getting unstuck. . . . This has helped me get to a good place with my timeline and I think I will actually finish my program because of the efforts of [my mentor]”
Fall 2024 mentee
“It has also been really helpful to have a consistent, nonjudgmental space where I can talk about my project every week! . . . Discussing feedback [from my advisors] has been a really useful part of the mentorship program that I hadn’t initially anticipated or even thought of, and it has helped keep me motivated to revise my work.”
Fall 2024 mentee