If I had to describe the Writers Room at Drexel University in one word, I would choose the word community.
The Writers Room, in my opinion, is first and foremost a creative space for everyone where art is crafted to bring people together. It doesn’t matter where you come from in the world, what your background is or what your aspirations are, the Writers Room has something to offer you and you have something that you can contribute to it.
Located on the first floor of MacAlister Hall, the space is placed just before the elevators, and it’s hard to miss if you exit or enter the hall on the Handshumacher Dining Hall side. The Writers Room is also home to a number of creative individuals. Founding Director Rachel Wenrick, Faculty Writing Fellow Kirsten Kaschock and Communications Coordinator Lauren Lowe are just a few that come to mind. If you go to the space, you will more than likely come into contact with several members of the Writers Room team, and they can all give you a much deeper background and understanding of the Writers Room than I can in this article.
I want to first say that the Writers Room is not the same thing as the Drexel Writing Center. I often find many students thinking that they are the same thing, or if they do know that they are two separate things, they aren’t entirely certain as to what specifically sets one apart from the other. Being someone who has now spent a fair amount of time in both spaces, I can say that they both share some similarities, but they are also extremely different. The Drexel Writing Center is more of a resource for students that can be used to help them improve upon their own writing, be it a writing assignment for a class or a personal project.
Unlike the Writing Center, you won’t find any peer tutors waiting to help you with all your writing needs at the Writers Room, but what you will find is a space that cultivates and archives writing. When you first step inside, you will immediately feel the history of writing and storytelling that has taken place in the space, and it’s a very inspiring feeling. The architecture and design also help give it a very calming atmosphere that is easy to think in. There were a few mornings where I set my alarm to wake me up a bit earlier than usual just so I could go and hangout in the space for an hour or so before my day started.
The Writers Room also holds events, such as writing workshops on the first Tuesdays of every month, readings and discussions on third Thursdays, and the TRIPOD writers-in-residence program, all of which you can find out more about on the Writers Room website. I took part in some of these last year and this year, and I most definitely can say that the experiences I had were very personal ones that I especially needed in my very busy and stressful third year of college.
On the surface, the Writers Room is a space that anyone can go to for writing related purposes, or just to enjoy the space. But if you take the time to really invest yourself in the space and the community, you will find that there’s quite a lot of insightful and eye-opening experiences that you can have.