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.

Orientation readings

Welcome back! Here are the readings for our orientation this Saturday (to be held from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM in the WCenter):

1. An excerpt from Barbara Ehrenreich's book, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America

2. one of Ehrenreich's blog posts on "Rich Get Poorer, Poor Disappear"

We'll discuss these at orientation, but feel free to comment on them here--

Happy Holidays everyone! I hope you all have survived the snowstorm and are safe at home in your warm cozy houses.

I'm writing in regards to the possibility of a Writing event. I recently had dinner with President Dooley, and he expressed interest in meeting with different student groups from campus. You can sign up through student senate, and spend the evening at the president's house for dinner, games, and general tomfoolery. I thought it might be nice to look into this as an event for the writing center crew, with the possibility of writing the consultants as well? I recently recieved a message from one of the students from my WRT 353 class, asking how my semester was. It occured to me then that we haven't seen the consultants at all! I thought it would be nice to meet up with them, chat, and increase our presence on campus.

Thoughts and feelings?

Enjoy the break, everyone!

A Closing Remark

This is just to say "Thank you!" to all who presented the past two Wednesdays. I was intrigued by the variety of approaches and the abundance of excellent points raised. Moreover, the execution matched the quality of the content! I do have to say that the "alienation" (a concept that I am professionally interested in) and the "deux ex machina" have kept me ruminating since (thank you, Angela, for the thought!).
I hope that everyone's semester concludes smoothly and successfully!

Info Request

I was remembering this morning an announcement from a few weeks back about an environmental essay contest in RI. I've got a handful of students with environmental topics form WRT 106 and a bunch of them have shown interest in taking their work further, for publishing or perhaps this type of contest.

Could I get some more info on that contest? Thanks!

Tutoring students from other disciplines

Last week I ran into one of the situations I've been most afraid of as a new tutor -- tutoring a grad student from a discipline I know absolutely nothing about. I've been worrying about this happening all semester! Tutoring undergrads, I feel fairly confident, especially when their papers are for a class I'm familiar with, like an English, Writing, or Philosophy class. But I've been nervous about how much I'd be able to help a grad student, especially one from a discipline that I have no experience with. I was nervous about whether or not I would be taken seriously, if the tutee would be able to figure out my cluelessness, and that I wouldn't be helpful at all.

Well, it happened. I got a tutee who was a graduate student in Accounting. When I found this out I had a moment of panic, trying to think of anything at all I knew about Accounting, which of course was nothing. He pulled out the paper that he wanted help with. And then he said...

"I'm mostly done with the paper, I just need some help with the citations."

I was immediately relieved. Citations are something I can do! As an English major, I am very familiar with MLA and not at all with any other style. I had no idea what style an Accounting paper should use, so I asked the tutee, and he didn't really know either, so he called a friend in the class who said their professor didn't care. I wasn't sure this was right, but what could I do? The tutee said that what he was familiar with was APA. So I quickly found the Longman handbook and flipped to the APA section. The tutee and I went through his list of sources and found the correct ways to cite each one.

I didn't think the session was bad -- it certainly went better than I'd initially expected -- but I did feel badly that the Longman handbook seemed to be doing more tutoring than I was doing. However, I don't know APA, so it was necessary.

How have other tutors handled situations like this?

Helpful Tutees

Lately, I have had some great sessions with students. The sessions are interactive and the tutee and I are on the same wavelength, it is such a great feeling to have. Especially because this is the first time I have ever been in the tutor position, it makes me feel really good about my abilities and helping others. With three consecutive awesome sessions, reality slapped me in the face with my fourth session. It's makes a session much more difficult when the tutee is not an active participant. I didn't even feel like the boy was shy, just that he simply did not care about the paper or my input. It was really frustrating because as tutors, people come to us looking for help. Why should I be digging into a person for some kind of inkling of desire to better a paper if they don't even want to be here in the first place? Obviously, I push this kind of thought out of my mind during the session but as soon as he left, I became very frustrated. I like being a directive tutor but I also really enjoy the laid back approach. Both are useful tactics for tutoring but being directive is totally necessary with certain kids. I'm mostly venting right now, because I know experiencing with a wide range of tutees makes me a better tutor. I just think that having a session with a tutee who is passionate about the paper makes the session much more helpful, for both the tutee and the tutor. Any thoughts? Similar experiences?