That Wednesday Thing and Last Minute Mayhem
Okay, well, I wasn't present to hear the discussion that happened Wednesday. I'm kind of wishing that I had been, but circumstances being what they are, I've read a few of your posts, and I think I have some idea about what I want to say. To start with, since I was at OHS when this discussion took place, I'd like to say how very very very very very grateful I am that the students we tutor are not surrounded by their peers and in High School. The apathy that permeated that building could be felt when you walked through the door. Now that I've gotten that out of my system, apathy in general, whether fired by teen angst or college angst is awful. In tutoring sessions it is completely fatal. You cannot make any process-oriented work happen if the student is not willing to put in their part, but since several other tutors have chosen to write on this very problem, I'm going to talk about last-minute sessions.
It's poetic justice that I should get a lot of the last-minute students, (I've written so many last minute papers I can't even count them) because I can understand now why my teachers would hate me for doing that. The students who come in with last minute papers usually have a lot to improve on and no time to do it. As tutors we're taught to address global issues first, help a student understand what a thesis is, where a conclusion fits into the picture, and how they might best go about drawing the two together using as much of the original paper as they can, if they can at all. The process of addressing over-all organization in a last minute paper completely changes. I would liken it to working to diffuse a time-bomb. Instead of analyzing improvements that need to be made long term, you analyze strict assignment requirements, such as page length, first, and then quickly search through a piece with the student reading to figure out which improvements will give you the most bang for your buck; what, and there will almost always be something, you can help the student do to get this paper the highest grade possible.
Usually the tutor will will serve as a living breathing spell checker to start with. The tutor will say things like, "Did you mean us here," when the word is typed use, addressing the simple – because that may be all you get to. I’ve never wanted a session to be worthless, and since there is such limited time, by the time you actually get through the paper far enough to discern what can be done about overarching issues, (because the situation forces tutors to address the student work now as a whole unit which doesn’t allow the free-range movement that I would prefer in a paper, turning it from a series of ideas into one of those twelve squared slide-puzzles) it may be too late. The most frustrating thing about it is that if they even had an hour outside of the tutoring session I would be able to give them something that would really be worthwhile. The worst ones for me personally, are the ones where the student still really wants to improve the paper, they’re trying to improve, they seem like willing learners, they just don’t give a tutor the time. All you can do is answer immediate needs, try to give them something to take from it, even if it is just that we don’t always type what we think we’re typing, and tell them that we can help them on their next paper more effectively if they come in earlier.
It's poetic justice that I should get a lot of the last-minute students, (I've written so many last minute papers I can't even count them) because I can understand now why my teachers would hate me for doing that. The students who come in with last minute papers usually have a lot to improve on and no time to do it. As tutors we're taught to address global issues first, help a student understand what a thesis is, where a conclusion fits into the picture, and how they might best go about drawing the two together using as much of the original paper as they can, if they can at all. The process of addressing over-all organization in a last minute paper completely changes. I would liken it to working to diffuse a time-bomb. Instead of analyzing improvements that need to be made long term, you analyze strict assignment requirements, such as page length, first, and then quickly search through a piece with the student reading to figure out which improvements will give you the most bang for your buck; what, and there will almost always be something, you can help the student do to get this paper the highest grade possible.
Usually the tutor will will serve as a living breathing spell checker to start with. The tutor will say things like, "Did you mean us here," when the word is typed use, addressing the simple – because that may be all you get to. I’ve never wanted a session to be worthless, and since there is such limited time, by the time you actually get through the paper far enough to discern what can be done about overarching issues, (because the situation forces tutors to address the student work now as a whole unit which doesn’t allow the free-range movement that I would prefer in a paper, turning it from a series of ideas into one of those twelve squared slide-puzzles) it may be too late. The most frustrating thing about it is that if they even had an hour outside of the tutoring session I would be able to give them something that would really be worthwhile. The worst ones for me personally, are the ones where the student still really wants to improve the paper, they’re trying to improve, they seem like willing learners, they just don’t give a tutor the time. All you can do is answer immediate needs, try to give them something to take from it, even if it is just that we don’t always type what we think we’re typing, and tell them that we can help them on their next paper more effectively if they come in earlier.
posted by Anonymous at 12:35 PM
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