a couple of my co-consultations have been with clients who were assigned to go to the writing center as part of a class. although the idea of that is good - that is, to get acquainted with the writing center - i feel like it might not be the best way to get students invested in writing. or if you're going to send your students there, at least give them a better idea of what to expect. i had two separate freshman seminar consultations where the student was forced to come in, and they said, "yeah i'm supposed to come in... this is my piece of writing." it was hard to determine where to lead the discussion, in addition to being hard to understand what exactly the client was expecting or hoping to get out of it. in those situations we helped the client with a couple parts of the papers that were a little bit hard to understand, and by the end of the session i just tried to make sure that they were happy with their text. 

in class today, though, trixie brought up the point that a lot of consultations are centered around the assignment rather than the student. it's perfectly acceptable to put off working on text itself by first establishing a good understanding of one another, and i wish i would have done that with the two freshman seminar students. after all, the only way you can truly decipher a client's expectations is to talk about them. this does not have to be from simply asking them what they want out of the session, but picking up on hidden clues like attitude toward the assignment and how comfortable they are, for example. i think that doing so will really help me have a better hold on consulting, especially when there are sessions that don't really have any particular guidelines.