my fears

Okay, so at the moment, I feel a little bit overwhelmed by the thought of posting something I write that the entire world can see. I’ve never actually done a blog before in my entire life. I really don’t even know what a blog truly is or even what the term means. So, I guess that’s where my anxiety for the class begins. As for my anxiety about becoming a writing tutor for Weber State University’s writing center, I honestly don’t know what to expect, so it’s hard to put into words exactly what my fears really are. I am one of those types that don’t like surprises, so not knowing what is going to happen or how it going to happen is very intimidating for me. I think my biggest anxiety is that I am not going to be a very effective tutor. All of my life, I have been a huge stickler about spelling and it shows up in my editing skills. For some reason, a misspelled word is always the first thing that I look for when I am reading somebody’s paper, and I know and understand now that using that approach is definitely not going to be very helpful for the student and his or her paper as a whole. I would be focused on the nitty-gritty details and not the ‘big picture’ of the paper, like the thesis and conclusion, which are much more likely to be graded more heavily than spelling and punctuation errors.

Another fear I have is having the inevitable situation occur when a student asks me a question that I simply do not know the answer to. I am the type of person who hates not being able to help someone find what they are looking for and I love that feeling I get when I’m able to help someone find the answer to whatever question that they have.
What’s worse than telling somebody, “I don’t know the answer”, would be to give them the wrong information all together. As a lab aide here in the computer labs at Weber State, I have already had to face those situations before several times and they’re not the most pleasant experiences I’ve had to go through while I pursue my education.

Another fear I have is my lack of knowledge of the MLA/APA/Chicago systems for how to correctly document sources. As a recent graduate of Weber State with a double major in History and English, I feel fairly confident that I can use the Chicago style of using footnotes and endnotes pretty efficiently, but I finished my English degree so long ago, I feel like I am not as on top of that style as I used to be. However, I am also enrolled here in the MA in English program, and I know that we will be covering these topics exhaustively in class, so I feel it is safe to say that those styles will be returning to my memory quite soon.