Just keep smiling and nodding when asked a question....
Basically, I fake it... I get out my "I'm right because I'm wearing the name tag voice" and I tell them all sorts of things that probably aren't true.
Totally not serious here.
There are two subject matters that I enjoy tutoring for. First, any subject that I know a lot about. Often my enjoyment is spliced with random stomach spasms as I read untruths, arguments I totally disagree with, and other things that I just think shouldn't be said about this subject that I love, but I always enjoy them overall. I love reading the poly sci kids' essays, and I enjoy tutoring essays on my favorite books, concepts that I've written on, etc.
The second type of paper I like is the complete opposite. These are the papers that use words that look made up to me, talk about stuff that I was previously unaware anyone bothered talking about, or introduce completely foreign ideas, concepts and facts. I feel like I'm being paid to learn when I read papers like this.
Before I move on, I feel like I need to answer the question I just begged: If I love the papers about subjects I know a lot about and love, and I love the papers about things I know nothing about, what papers don't I enjoy tutoring? Well, to be honest, there aren't many that I don't enjoy to some extent, but in case of favorites, everything in between the 'unknown' and 'subjects I am passionate about' do not make my list of favorite subject matters to tutor. Moving on.
There are problems with both. On the subjects I know too much about, I always want to rewrite their papers. Hmm, did you know John Locke said something that might fit here? Have you actually read Marx, because I'm pretty sure he didn't actually say that. You're saying what about Obama and McCain? What do you mean Russia and Georgia are both to blame for the conflict? I honestly have to keep myself in check and pull back from their work.
For unfamiliar subject matters much of how the session goes depends on what the student wants. If they want grammar and flow, I can do that with only a vague idea about the subject. If they want logical arguments, well, then I pretend it's a reading comp section on the LSAT and try to figure it out as I go along. I can only think of once that I really had no idea what to say or do about a paper after reading it, because most I think writers explain their ideas in the paper adequately enough so as I go through I can work with the paper. The once that I didn't know what to do, it was honestly because nothing struck me as out of place in the paper, her grammar was better than mine, her flow made sense, even if the ideas were beyond me. Her paper might have been using basic vocabulary words wrong and I had no way of picking that up, but her ideas seemed solid, and I really didn't know what to tell her other than: "looks great! Maybe add a little more in your conclusion section. Thanks, come again."
And now that I've written about this, I have a feeling something is coming. I'll get my unfamiliar subject matter paper brought in by a belligerent student, and probably I'll have failed a test sometime earlier that day so I'll be feeling out of sorts anyways. It'll be fun...
Totally not serious here.
There are two subject matters that I enjoy tutoring for. First, any subject that I know a lot about. Often my enjoyment is spliced with random stomach spasms as I read untruths, arguments I totally disagree with, and other things that I just think shouldn't be said about this subject that I love, but I always enjoy them overall. I love reading the poly sci kids' essays, and I enjoy tutoring essays on my favorite books, concepts that I've written on, etc.
The second type of paper I like is the complete opposite. These are the papers that use words that look made up to me, talk about stuff that I was previously unaware anyone bothered talking about, or introduce completely foreign ideas, concepts and facts. I feel like I'm being paid to learn when I read papers like this.
Before I move on, I feel like I need to answer the question I just begged: If I love the papers about subjects I know a lot about and love, and I love the papers about things I know nothing about, what papers don't I enjoy tutoring? Well, to be honest, there aren't many that I don't enjoy to some extent, but in case of favorites, everything in between the 'unknown' and 'subjects I am passionate about' do not make my list of favorite subject matters to tutor. Moving on.
There are problems with both. On the subjects I know too much about, I always want to rewrite their papers. Hmm, did you know John Locke said something that might fit here? Have you actually read Marx, because I'm pretty sure he didn't actually say that. You're saying what about Obama and McCain? What do you mean Russia and Georgia are both to blame for the conflict? I honestly have to keep myself in check and pull back from their work.
For unfamiliar subject matters much of how the session goes depends on what the student wants. If they want grammar and flow, I can do that with only a vague idea about the subject. If they want logical arguments, well, then I pretend it's a reading comp section on the LSAT and try to figure it out as I go along. I can only think of once that I really had no idea what to say or do about a paper after reading it, because most I think writers explain their ideas in the paper adequately enough so as I go through I can work with the paper. The once that I didn't know what to do, it was honestly because nothing struck me as out of place in the paper, her grammar was better than mine, her flow made sense, even if the ideas were beyond me. Her paper might have been using basic vocabulary words wrong and I had no way of picking that up, but her ideas seemed solid, and I really didn't know what to tell her other than: "looks great! Maybe add a little more in your conclusion section. Thanks, come again."
And now that I've written about this, I have a feeling something is coming. I'll get my unfamiliar subject matter paper brought in by a belligerent student, and probably I'll have failed a test sometime earlier that day so I'll be feeling out of sorts anyways. It'll be fun...
posted by Michelle Jeffs at 11:03 AM
1 Comments:
It happened. Today I tutored a paper where I understood maybe every three words. Maybe. The paper dealt with the hormonal causes of obesity and it was tech-term heavy. The best part was the tutee read the paper, and though she clearly understood the terms, she could not pronounce them either. We laughed our way through the session, got rid of some reduncancy, worked on organization, and muddled through the rest. I did find it ironic that the most unfamiliar subject paper I've ever endured came so soon after I blogged and predicted it.
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