Many college freshmen find it difficult to explore their ideas about writing in the presence of teachers who have already decided the agenda for their student-teacher conferences. Teachers often feel compelled to lead the conversation and fall into an authoritarian model of interaction, "depositing" knowledge into students and ignoring questions that do not fit the agenda. When words or concepts become authoritarian--fixed models in the minds of teachers and students--possibilities for exploring alternatives diminish. Teachers must clear their minds of any preconceived ideal agendas and enter the conference willing to focus on the concerns of the student and the emerging narrative. The way in which teachers and students perceive what happens in a conference influences the outcome of not only the conference, but also of the paper being discussed--fixed-agenda conferences are likely to result in papers consisting of the students' approximations of the teacher's idea of an ideal treatment of the subject. A preferable conference scenario involves dialogue, a chance for students to formulate their own ideas with feedback from the teacher, whereby the resulting papers will take the form students decide is rhetorically appropriate to their intentions as writers. Students often know where their weaknesses as writers lie, but unless the teacher bothers to listen, an opportunity to make real progress in the students' writing will be lost. (AEW)