Balancing Relationships

Next we'll hear that Writing Center Directors need a PhD in psychology on top of the MBA and PhD in Rhet Comp. Fitzgerald and Stephenson do make some good points in "Directors at the Center: Relationships Across Campus" about how crucial it is to maintain good relationships with all the stakeholders of the writing center. That's true of any enterprise, though. It's the most important and yet the most difficult to manage because you have to depend on the goodwill of others; you cannot force people to be pleasant and collaborative. As a psychologist would say, you can't control others, only yourself, so it behooves you to associate with those with who are positive and avoid those who are negative. Of course, you can't always avoid the negative types: Sometimes you can find ways to accommodate them and sometimes no matter what you do, they keep clubbing you over the head. Fitzgerald and Stephenson concede, "This may mean making collaborative alliances elsewhere, or it may mean quitting. Either way, recognizing the situation allows us to be proactive rather than reactive" (121).