Phew! That was one long sentence.

I definitely agree that staying on too safe of ground will result in an unproductive session, and if tutors are uncertain if they are crossing the line, then they should just go ahead and take the chance because, like Wingate stated, a tutor can always recover the session, and after the tutor has recovered the session then he/she can take a moment to step back and see what it was that he/she did wrong and learn from the situation, but if he/she never crosses the line, then he/she will never be able to learn from their mistakes which is the best way to learn; therefore he/she will not probably not reach their full potential in tutoring, nor will the tutee benefit from the situation because when a tutor takes over the session the tutee can still learn a little bit by observing the patterns and corrections the tutor has made, so then the tutee would not be walking away empty handed, and at least the tutor has planted some type of a seed in the tutee which would somewhat help them in their future papers, and also although a tutor should not be a counselor it is okay to empathize with the tutee every once and a while because this will let the tutee know that writing is challenging, and the tutor is there to help him or her get through it, so the tutee will be more likely to come back to the Writing Center because they feel comfortable and welcome, and also if the tutee does not understand something because they do not have the proper background skills in writing, then it is probably okay for the tutor to give the tutee a crash coarse in writing, so that the tutee will be able to understand the concept that he/she needs to understand; although this might be overwhelming for the tutee at first, it will definitely benefit them in the present and future because they will not be leaving the Writing Center empty handed, but they will have gathered more knowledge that they can take with them in the future, and I actually observed an example of this when I saw Sam tutoring a bio-med student, and she had never written an essay before, so she did not know the basic structure of an essay, and Sam first went through the structure and then helped her with her particular problem of outlining, so the bio-med student would have never been able to construct an outline for her future paper if Sam never would have “overwhelmed” her with the outline of an essay which makes a perfect example of taking in chance in crossing the line.