consultation shadowing: hard copy or no copy?

This evening I observed a Writing Center consultation in which a senior student came to the Writing Center to work on a 5-page paper for her a history class, more specifically wanting help with her sentence structure, phrasing, grammar, ect. She had e-mailed a copy of her paper to the writing consultant earlier but had since made changes. She also failed to bring a printed copy of her paper with her so they were forced to view it on a laptop computer. I can see where being a writing consultant can be rather frustrating when the student is less than prepared for the meeting because it does invest a great deal of time out of the session for the consultant to go back through and catch up with where the writer is. And from observing the given situation, I also think it can sort of make the session a bit awkward when the consultant is reading and reviewing for some amount of time while the student just sits there bored staring while they wait. A few weeks ago, I posted about how a student had come into the Writing Center to go over an outline that was on her computer and I mentioned that perhaps this is more useful than having a hard copy so that there is less of a distraction to hinder open conversation. However, after shadowing this specific instance where a student came to review a full-written paper without an actual copy of the paper, I have come to add to my opinion on the situation: I think that when it comes to brainstorming (or being in the very beginning stages of writing), it is more beneficial to not have a sheet of paper (such as an outline, ect.) to stare down at and force rigid structure which can inhibit the flow of new ideas. Thus, being able to have more open discussion to the get ideas flowing (writing or listing as you go so that they can be remembered later when it comes time to put the pieces of the puzzle together).

The writing consultant immediately handled the situation with her strategy of using the document-editing feature on Microsoft word.