One-on-one Session

You, the researcher and writer, meet with an advisor (or student with instructor) to discuss progress, plans, concerns, and questions. One-on-one sessions should begin early in the project and be scheduled to allow timely resolution of any misunderstandings about the advisor's comments on written work and your responses to them. Discussions about misunderstandings often provide a chance to open up significant issues about your relationship to audience and influencing others.
When one-on-one sessions are free-form, which is typically the case, advisors are free to offer advice that may or may not be what you were looking for. It is fruitful, therefore, to give sessions a more mindful structure. For example, a 30-minute meeting can be divided into phases:

• first 1/4: researcher and advisor freewrite to take stock of where things are at and identify their goals and priorities for the discussion;
• middle 1/2: discussion following the researcher's agenda first with, time permitting, additions from the advisor;
• final 1/4: researcher and advisor separately make notes of what they learned from the discussion.