Up and Running...And Already Blogging?

Yes, I find that the first day of tutoring presented me with quite a few calls to write. The first thing I should point out here is that I began my shift disconcerted; I was suprised to learn that my four available appointments were booked solid on my first shift for the term. I thought, I suppose, that I might ease my way into the tutoring semester, but no such luck. I hope that these impresssions aren't tainted with that mood, but they likely are--just a quick preamble/disclaimer...


I was surprised to learn that my first tutee was a professor--a visiting professor from another country. I asked what he wanted to work on during the session, and he said he wanted to talk about how the writing center could help him with langauge and with writing.

No problem, I thought--I have this down: we let writers set the agenda; we work on specific writing-related issues and/or on particular pieces of writing; we, at times, help writers identify patterns in their own writing, etc.

However, when I finished this longish monologue detailing practices, he just sort of stared at me blankly. Picture: every facial feature completely still, posture titled slightly to the side (is he bored?), legs crossed, silent. Hmm...I wondered if he thought I was pausing, so I pretended that I had merely been pausing and I continued talking. However, my structure fell apart and I was just sort of spouting off little bits of information I could think of and asking random questions in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way; he started to look a little bewildred, so I slowed down and tried to be as relevant as possible...I told him about a former writing tutor we used to have; "She is fluent in Arabic," I told him with a knowing smile. "It is too bad she isn't here anymore."

Then his eyebrows forrowed and he tilted his head to the side. "I am already fluent in Arabic. Already I can speak and write Arabic."

I tried to say that I had known that and that I meant that perhaps she'd have made a good tutor for him due to this shared langauge background, but I suppose I see now how that doesn't actually make perfect sense.

After this conversation, he (remarkably) asked if he could make a running appointment with me -- twice a week, and could he have my email address.
I said yes to the appointments, so we'll see how it goes. It will, hopefully, be less awkward when there is writing between us.

The next session was fairly unremarkable -- a literature review in need of a better structural/organizational design, but I think the tutee looked vaguely upset by the end. I can't pinpoint why, and I am hoping that the upset was more overwhlem with her own work and not to do with aggressive tutoring.

The last session, though, was perhaps as unusal as the first. The tutee told me he is a PhD student working on a seminar paper and that his professor told him he needed to get writing help. The draft was thick, so I suggested he tell me which section he'd most want to work on. His reply: "I can email you the rest, what you don't get to today."
My reply, in brief: "No, thank you."
I told him we'd start at the beginning and we'd see how far we could get. I could see why his professor wanted him to get help; the essay was confusingly written, and he had a very strange variation on the subjunctive that manifest itself as a series of misplaced and badly executed "woulds." He seemed to want very much to question my grammar/mechanics knowledge. Every time I suggested a sentence-level change, he sort of grunted/commented on the fact that it was like that for a reason that was clearly over my head (it was not)...since this was the end of a strange shift, I very nearly told him that I am the product of 17 years of catholic education.

That's right, nuns. Sister Marie Therese with her "Jerry" books--her beloved 9th grade grammar books...my friend, one day, threw them out the window of our 3rd floor English classroom before she made her way down the hall and into the door; she looked for them on the shelf where they were usually kept, and she looked completely dejected to find them gone. It would be like me without the Longman's chart on transitional devices.
She was not red in the face and screaming the way she'd have been if someone were to talk while sentence diagrams unfolded in perfectly slanted cursive writing on the blackboard. No. She was silent and expressionless, and something in her stillness told me she was too overwhelmed to be angry per say. She made him go to the lawn to collect them. She did not even call the Christian brother who was our disciplinarian and resident ass grabber. We watched out of those small, rectangular windows as he tried to stay ahead of the wind blowing them out onto the highway. The books landed on our desks crumpled. We sharpened our pencils.

I ended this session by using a rather loud and emphatic tone and telling him to look up the subjunctive mood in a handbook, to (no one will be surprised here) see a transitional devices chart, to move certain parts around, to cut down on repetitions I could point out, and then to come back. Finally, finally he started to give me the impression that he thought I just might know something about writing effectively. That made me very glad in a perverse and mean-spirited sort of way, and he should be equally glad that I did not throw his essay out the window.