Tutor of the Week: Victoria Phelps

Our next Tutor of the Week is Victoria Phelps, a graduating senior with an English major, and history and creative writing minors.

Tori Phelps

Tori has been a Writing Center tutor for nearly three years. During her time as a Writing Center tutor, Victoria has served as a senior tutor, a mentor tutor, an online tutor, and a grad tutor. She has created two workshops and co-led three workshops for the Writing Center: a Short Story Writing Workshop for high school students, an artist's statements workshop, and a writing for creative publication workshop. The Short Story Writing Workshop was preceded by a trip to Interlochen's Creative Writing Retreat, funded by an SVSU Foundation grant.

Here is what she had to say about her work at the Writing Center and writing in general:

"A good number of my sessions begin with the writer claiming they're "not a good writer" or even that they're "a bad writer." Maybe writers think poorly of their own writing because it's challenging to write or because they've received poor grades on past papers. Whatever the reason, I don't think it exists. This is the point most people say/think "yeah, well, you haven't read my writing." But honest to god, in the three years I've worked at the center, I don't think I've ever met the mythical "bad writer."
"What is a bad writer, anyway? Writing is incredibly subjective and varies from form to form. What may make for so-called "bad writing" in one discipline is entirely appropriate "good writing" in another. Does "bad writing" hinge on grammar? I don't think so, since grammatical rules are themselves problematic, and the real purpose of writing is to communicate ideas, which can be done with total disregard for "rules" of any kind. No, I think perhaps a "bad writer" is a writer who has given up entirely on communicating. Writing is an act of persistence, and the act of coming into the Writing Center is itself an act of persistence, which may explain why I've yet to meet a "bad writer." So you may want to become a stronger writer in your discipline or in the ease of the craft, but don't consign yourself to the fate of a "bad writer" and claim a label that's beneath you. Writing is perseverance, and you own it."

Tori is also heavily involved outside of her work at the Writing Center:

"In addition to tutoring, I'm Editor-in-Chief of Cardinal Sins and a staff writer for the Valley Vanguard. Last year, I co-chaired SVSU's first Human Library. I'm a member of the honors program, and completed my thesis on disabilities in Victorian fairy tales last year. I also serve as vice president of SVSU's Sigma Tau Delta chapter and an officer of Cardinal Readers. Since I read all the time, in my down time, I like to watch TV and movies. I'm currently working through Hayao Miyazaki's films and watching the latest season of New Girl. I also enjoy listening to TV and movie scores while working; my favorite composer is currently Ramin Djawadi, who composes for series like Game of Thrones and Westworld."