The MSU Writing Center offers tutors a comprehensive educational foundation. Tutors study language, learning, and communication theory, while gaining practical experience working with writers. But how do those tutors actually apply the skills they've learned in the Writing Center following graduation? 

Catching up with Destiny 

Destiny Brugman

Destiny Brugman worked as an undergraduate writing tutor from 2016 to 2018, a position that she quickly fell in love with. “I just spent all of my time in the Writing Center hanging out with other tutors and getting pulled into projects.” Destiny noted, “I was trying to work the max amount of hours that I could and all of that, too. So, I loved it.” In addition to working as a tutor, she was the outreach intern from 2017 to 2018 when she learned marketing skills and design rhetoric in handling the Writing Center’s public communications. She attributes much of her development as both a learner and a professional to being involved with as many aspects of the Writing Center as she could and finding collaborative opportunities within that structure. 

Since graduation, Destiny has remained in higher education. She received a Master of Arts degree in English Studies from Western Washington University in 2020 and has moved on to Miami University Ohio to pursue a graduate degree in Women and Gender Studies in addition to a PhD in Composition and Rhetoric. The MSU Writing Center “made me more prepared for grad school,” she said. “How I learned to be a teacher even came from the Writing Center.” In addition to her continued education, she has also taken an administrative position as the Graduate Assistant Director at Miami University’s Howe Writing Center, a position that has allowed her to fall in love with writing center communities all over again. Being able to mentor undergraduate and graduate tutors has presented an incredible opportunity for Destiny to pass along the knowledge she gained from her years as a writing center tutor. The lessons she learned at the MSU Writing Center—about hospitable teaching practices and third space writing studio theory, in particular—have found new applications at the Howe Writing Center.

Destiny Brugman with Howe Writing Center Tutors.

Destiny poses with tutors from the Howe Writing Center at Miami University of Ohio at the 2022 Eastern Writing Center Association Conference.
 

When asked what wisdom she had to pass on to current MSU Writing Center tutors, Destiny encouraged students to do as she had done and embrace every opportunity to enter the worlds of research, publishing, and teaching early. “I think if there's just a spark or an interest, pursue it,” she commented. “Do it. Ask for help with it, even if it's the most outlandish idea.” The support for Destiny’s projects and ideas by Writing Center faculty and the community of tutors at large was instrumental in her decision to go into graduate studies and provided her with lifelong skills that she thinks would have been difficult to get anywhere else. 

Destiny was quick to point out that the decision she made in her sophomore year at MSU to become a writing tutor has changed her life in myriad ways. “I think it's really valuable because in classes, especially when I was an undergrad, but even as a grad student, sometimes it's a class and it's a paper and, like, where does it go beyond this moment? And your writing center work does go beyond the moment. It matters in so many ways, from your relationship to the writers to your relationship with writing now and forever.”