Known Unknowns
So, I realized that I haven't posted on here in a little while. That is unfortunate, considering that it is a portion of my grade. Nonetheless, I am here now to ramble about the things I wish I'd known right from the beginning.
A good grasp of APA and Chicago styles would have been useful from day one. Having only ever written in MLA style, I found myself at a bit of a disadvantage, although I DID have my writing Bible (aka Keys For Writers). Hooray!
I wonder if I would have even taken the job as a tutor if I had known then what I know now. The intimidation factor would have trippled for sure. So many people come into the Writing Center who know more than I do on a variety of subjects. I constantly ask myslef how I can possibly help them. And yet I sail in every time and just do the best I can. I sometimes question the wisdom of having undergraduate tutors help graduate students.
That leads to the question of: when do we become experts or scholars in our field? When we leave this class and after a certain amount of tutoring hours we will be called "master tutors". But we won't really be masters. In a way, tutors are "inventing the university" as much as the students we tutor. We pretend to be experts and we tutor the students based on what we think their professors want. When will we be able to write and teach others to write merely for writing's sake and not in an effort to impress a professor?
To sum up: I didn't know much when I began as a tutor, and now after a semester of it, I see that there is so much more that I don't know that I didn't know I didn't know. I'm left with a pile of known unknowns rather than a pile of unknown unknowns.
A good grasp of APA and Chicago styles would have been useful from day one. Having only ever written in MLA style, I found myself at a bit of a disadvantage, although I DID have my writing Bible (aka Keys For Writers). Hooray!
I wonder if I would have even taken the job as a tutor if I had known then what I know now. The intimidation factor would have trippled for sure. So many people come into the Writing Center who know more than I do on a variety of subjects. I constantly ask myslef how I can possibly help them. And yet I sail in every time and just do the best I can. I sometimes question the wisdom of having undergraduate tutors help graduate students.
That leads to the question of: when do we become experts or scholars in our field? When we leave this class and after a certain amount of tutoring hours we will be called "master tutors". But we won't really be masters. In a way, tutors are "inventing the university" as much as the students we tutor. We pretend to be experts and we tutor the students based on what we think their professors want. When will we be able to write and teach others to write merely for writing's sake and not in an effort to impress a professor?
To sum up: I didn't know much when I began as a tutor, and now after a semester of it, I see that there is so much more that I don't know that I didn't know I didn't know. I'm left with a pile of known unknowns rather than a pile of unknown unknowns.
posted by Rachel at 12:10 PM
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