Okiedokie No Way

Honestly? I would rather tutor those “really bad” papers. I view the “okay” papers as a sort of trap—on the surface it looks like any other piece of ground that I’ve treaded before, but unless specific care is taken to inspect and tread carefully, I might end up getting sucked right into a quicksand pit leading to failure for me but also mainly for the tutee.

With papers that seem to be all right on the surface and only thirty minutes to read the thing, pound out the top three items of discussion, and then relay it to the tutee while including all of the tutee’s concerns, it is all too easy to miss the imminent looming problems that would make an “okay” paper and writer so much better. Then once the paper and its writer have left the Writing Center, rethinking the session often leads to better advice that could not possibly help the writer now unless the said writer returns for more—although if that doesn’t happen then perhaps the tutor will learn from her mistakes and might help another writer in the future.

After all, the “okay” papers are ones I don’t to often see passing my way. I get so used to seeing papers where the top problems are sentence structure or overall organization that when something that doesn’t have those problems slides along I get fooled into thinking that there’s nothing there to really work on. Fortunately, I think I’m learning how to overcome the foolishness, especially with the analysis of that okay paper in Friday’s class.

I mean, I’ll still probably see those pretty good papers come by and maybe hey, they’ll actually be pretty good without any largely problematic issues. And maybe they’ll be like that Friday’s class paper where on first quick read it seems to be okay, although on closer inspection without pressing time or a waiting line of next tutees, something that is sometimes rare in actual sessions, the whole paper caves in on itself in mainly failure with its bright ray of hope existing in the final sentence. With that, one of the best pieces of advice in dealing with these papers was the option to head directly to the end. I wouldn’t have thought of that! Yet when I heard it, it made perfect sense.

I’m going to admit that my mind is fairly trained to see mainly grammar and sentence structure problems, word choice and overall quick-fix organization. I guess I’m too used to seeing ESL—although I guess they are now LEAP—students in my sessions. It’s starting to make my tutoring sight focus on what I see with those papers in all my other sessions. In that respect I’m very glad for this prompt as well as the Friday class. Something like that should be obvious, but I don’t think I’ve ever consciously considered it! Oh well, I guess that’s what this class is for. I have to learn these fine tuning details somehow.

Give me awful any day!

A good paper...

Humph.

I would definately agree that tutoring a good paper is harder than tutoring a bad paper (though not an awful one). The biggest issue is that as a tutor, my job is to improve the writter and improve the paper simultaneously. When a good paper is brought in, that effectively eliminates half of my job.

When I am given a well-written paper, I generally turn to the student and asks them why they came in. What was their purpose? Did they have concerns? Do they have any other classes that they needed help with? Do they have things that their professor said they need to work on?

Usually, after asking all of these questions, the student will give me enough information to fill the tutoring session as much as I possibly can. I either help them with whatever problems their professor thinks they have, or clarify anything that they're confused about.

Reading a paper aloud can also help. If the student wants me to correct and improve the essay, I can always pull some random advice out of thin air, even if it’s just word choice and the way sentences are constructed. I’m a big fan of proofreading aloud. That makes the biggest difference in how people write. Written English, while being different than spoken English, isn’t too different. Reading aloud what you’ve written helps a student hear what they wrote, not just what they thought they wrote.

On another note, the classroom discussion about thesis statements really helped me. I had someone come to be tutored on Thursday with a paper that was fairly well written, but it was a little weird. I couldn’t figure out what the problem was for a minute, until I realized that she didn’t have a thesis statement!! That made me very happy, because I knew what I was supposed to do. We’d just talked about it!

The woman made things difficult. She didn’t want to focus. Her thought process went in circles, revisiting the same ideas over and over. Finally I made her write everything down by herself, which helped her focus a little more, but she kept trying to manipulate me into writing her a new thesis and reorganizing her paper for her. She’d ask me questions like, “I’m not sure what I should put here…What do you think?” or “Does this sound best here or here?” It was frustrating to try to guide the session so she wouldn’t try to take advantage of me, but I couldn’t let my irritation show. Some people…

Anyway, the point was, although she had a well-written paper (at least grammatically), her organization and other things left a lot to be desired. I was luckily able to talk to her about problems, but, had I not realized that her thesis could be better stated, I’m not sure what I would have said to her. I hate admitting weakness and failure more than anything else, so admitting I couldn’t help her would be humiliating for me. I guess I would have swallowed my pride and done it, but for now, I’m just glad the essay wasn’t as good as I thought it was.

Do I really have to decide?

Which is easier for a tutor, a good paper or a bad paper? I haven’t quite decided. It depends. Both are fun in their own way, and both can be very challenging.

A good paper is fun to peruse. You have an easier time understanding what you are reading, and you don’t get that “horrible paper headache” from trying. You can give a good writer information and be fairly sure they will understand it. For instance, if you suggest clarifying the main idea the writer will at least know what you are talking about. You also know that the writer will probably be happy with the finished product, since it wasn’t that bad to begin with. You get the feeling the paper will likely end up very well, and that you had something to do with it.

There are also challenges associated with tutoring a seasoned writer. It is harder to find things to fix. The mistakes are more subtle: they don’t jump out at you, screaming for relief. Instead you have to read the paper all the way through, scratch your head, read it out loud a few times, then circle the two typos you find in the third paragraph.

You also have to be careful so your advice doesn’t sound like an insult. It is harder to get a good writer to try something like reading their paper out loud to gauge clarity. Some experienced writers find it hard to even walk into the Writing Lab, as if someone important might see them there and their reputations would be ruined. They walk into the Writing Center quietly, checking both ways down the hallway. When you ask if you can help them, they flush and stammer and whisper what they need. It makes you feel like the receptionist at a fertility clinic. Pride makes it hard.

Pride isn’t as much of a problem with a “bad” paper. A writer who is struggling is often much more willing to receive instruction and suggestions. You also get to explain writing principles in terms that are easy to understand. That can be good practice for those of us who are pursuing careers in education.

The challenges involved in tutoring a bad paper involve knowing where to start and when to stop. You don’t want to overwhelm a struggling writer. If they get too much to work on, they will feel so overwhelmed they might want to drop the class. You could end up to scaring them away from writing all together. Instead, you need to give them something new to work with, something that will make a big difference in the quality of their paper. It’s great when you can help someone like that.

I really don’t know if I prefer good papers or bad ones. I do know I like being able to help people. I like the fact that no two papers are exactly alike (unless plagiarism is involved). That fact guarantees that tutoring will never be boring. I like that.

Getting To the Point

I think it is hard to tutor any paper! Well, I suppose one paper could prove to be more challenging than another. But, I still have never tutored another paper. This last summer as I was taking English 2010, I came to the writing center to get my persuasion paper tutored. I was quite surprised to find that my tutor really did not see much to change about it. Nevertheless, the points she did have were excellent. She almost did not say anything about grammar, but she helped me to see some other alternatives for sentence placement and a more consistent writing style.
Based on my observation, I do not know if it was more difficult to evaluate my paper, but I could see that my tutor was still able to find something to tell me. I think that it would be more difficult for me to tutor a well-written paper because my eyes are not as well-trained as they will one day be. The tutor I met over the summer had obviously had experience enough to be able to brainstorm new ideas with me rather than just saying, “Good job! I can't think of anything else you could do.” Even though nothing in my paper changed dramatically, I left my session with some wonderful new options that I had not previously thought of.
A paper that is not so well-written has many obvious errors that are quickly caught. In this case, I think that it may be easier to see immediate ways to help, but it seems that finding those not so obvious issues would be more difficult whether the paper is “pretty good” or “pretty bad.” I like the methods that we have been learning in class: we brainstorm, we list, and then we negotiate what we think are the most important issues to address. I think it is a good approach to take for any paper. However, it sure does take some time to learn how to be quick at getting to the point.
Overall, I think that the most challenging part about tutoring any paper is finding the most important points to be addressed. If the paper is a poor one you may start with thesis and organization. If it is a good one you might start with rewording sentences and finding alternatives that are just as good as what is already written, or better. Either way, it takes trained eyes to notice those points; that is the most important part about the tutoring session. Now that I think about it, since I have had a chance to be in English 3840 and I have been learning so much about the art of tutoring, I am a little more nervous than I was the first week of class. I know that I will soon be developing a better opinion of what is hard and what is easy.

I like cheese!

What would I do if I had a student come to me with a paper that did not have too much wrong with it? Could I tell them it is really good and tell them to leave cause there is not a thing I could do to their paper? Just kidding. Well, I do not really know exactly what I would do seeing as it has never happened to me before. Every paper I have looked at so far has at least had grammatical errors. So I can only offer speculations on what I would do with that student and their paper.

The first thing I would do if I received a grand paper that was close to perfection, is give the writer jubilant congratulations on a job well done, and then maybe politely ask them what they are doing there as their paper is already A material. Then I would laugh at my own joke and do my best to help them make such a grand paper even grander. Once all of the mechanic problems, if any, were taken care of I would move into the more dark and scary part of research papers, the thesis. I would ask the student what their paper was about to check if it matched with my understanding of the paper. If there were any discrepancies I would then proceed to work on the thesis and support to get the paper to the point where it exactly matched the students ideas, in their own words of course. Once finished with that I would on the structure and organization of ideas to get everything ship shape. If I could not find anything else I would ask the student if they had any thoughts or concerns with the paper, and go through them if there where any. The last thing I would do is ask the student what professors they had had and who taught them how to write, because I would like to learn to write like that.

I am not going to lie, I am having to come up with a lot of bull to get to five hundred words for this topic. Here is some more. I am trying to think what it would be like if someone actually came in with an absolutely perfect paper. While this is an entirely hypothetical situation and I understand a perfect paper is based on opinion we will pretend, for the sake of the situation, that the paper is perfect in every way. I would probably read through it again to try to catch anything I missed on the first run through. If nothing was found I would talk to the student about the thesis and support to make sure I completely understood the paper and that there was no problem of clarity. If nothing again I would grab another tutor and have them read the paper. And when the expert tutor could not find anything wrong I would send the student, while quietly referring to the student as an English wizard who will one day conquer the entire language if not the world, packing.

Too bad or not too bad...is that the question?

Writer’s block, it seems to strike every time the blogging deadline looms near. But, alas, the blog has been started and I can now begin the prompt. A good paper or a bad paper? I suppose it depends on how you define good and bad? Is it bad grammar? Bad organization? Or is it amazingly offensive? I suppose it could be all of the above, but as long as bad isn’t used in the street lingo sense where it actually means good then I suppose the definition isn’t too important.

Personally, I think I would like to tutor a student with a bad paper rather than a student with a good paper. From the experiences I’ve had, it seems like good papers don’t require as much engagement and the student usually wants someone to double check it. I’m not saying that’s always the case, but has been from a lot of the experiences I have had.

A bad paper requires a lot of attention, effort, and focus. Some of the bad papers I have tutored have been great experiences. It allows the tutor to teach the student about the whys, hows, and whats of English. I had a great experience with this last semester. A student came in and he was writing a six page argument paper. He had to have so many sources and meet other requirements. He was quite overwhelmed by the project and came to enlist the help of a tutor. When I first sat down with him the entire paper was one big paragraph. Six pages with almost no breaks. It was pretty overwhelming and I had absolutely no idea where to begin. But, we started. It was a long session. I think it was on a Saturday and went for an hour or two. We made a lot of progress, but still had a lot to do. He revised the paper and came back the following Saturday. This happened for a few weeks. Every week we would go over the paper and see what else could be done. By the end of our sessions, the paper was drastically better. But, the greatest thing that came out of this wasn’t the paper. It was the growth of the student. Every week when he would come in the paper would be much better. But, it wasn’t just because he fixed the mistakes we found. He would scrutinize every detail and try to make the entire paper better. I was amazed at how much he would do. Also, I learned a lot of important lessons about how to tutor from those sessions.

Bad papers give you the chance to get more involved, at least that is how I feel. You get to talk to the student and help them figure out the answers to their questions. It’s hard to help someone who is already pretty good at what you’re trying to help them with. I have found that some of the greatest tutoring experiences have come from the most daunting papers.

Everything is relative (yes, I realize that statement is self-contradictory).

As far as I am concerned, pretty good and pretty bad are the same distance from a nice, central, decent paper. Each and every paper is different, and therefore, has its own particular difficulties.

A "pretty bad" paper, for example, would be riddled with organizational problems, comma splices, tangential ideas, and lack of coherency. In this case, it is best to address the biggest problems. Organization and purpose are probably the best things to work on in such a case. This can, however, be problematic. Just try telling students that their papers lack meaning. A student can spend hours working on an essay, and the wrong kind of criticism could make the tutoring session somewhat dangerous. A "pretty bad" paper is like a dilapidated home purchased for renovation. There is a lot of work to do, but its fairly easy to get started.

"Pretty good" papers are like a brand new car which develops a "clunk, clunk" sound. Everything seems to be in order, but there are a few minute problems. It is difficult to know where to start with a well written paper. It can even be frustrating. The grammatical errors in good papers may be hard to spot, but they're even harder to explain. Such papers make me want to grab Claire and utter in nonsensical English, "make it do right!" because I am not sure how to go about explaining the problem.

What makes pretty good papers and pretty bad papers mostly equal though, is the fact that I am not trying to just fix grammar. I am really trying to help writers understand how to make their writing better. Whether that be understanding run-on-sentences, faulty parallelism, or sequential order. Helping the writer understand is the goal. All those errors and hard-to-explain grammar principals are the means.

I always try to put myself in the place of the student. I try to imagine coming into the Writing Center for the first time (I really do have to imagine; I've never been in here to have a paper looked at). It must be nerve-wracking. Especially if students feel self-conscious about their writing abilities. The social interaction between tutor and tutee cannot be left out of the equation. It is this interaction which can produce a healthy learning environment. It can also create a terrible well of misunderstanding. Grammar isn't the hardest part of tutoring. It's the social aspect.

Every student who comes in has a different attitude about the tutoring process. Every tutor has slightly different ideas about how to tutor. Every paper has its strengths and its weaknesses. A pretty bad paper may make for an easy tutoring session because its author has a good attitude about the tutoring process. A pretty good paper may make for a terrible session because the author is disengaged and hostile. The roles could, however, be entirely reversed. Every session is situational.

Good vs Bad...I've heard of this battle before...

I’ve considered this question also. I think that both pretty bad and pretty good papers have their pros and cons. With pretty bad papers, you can see exactly what it is the writer needs to work on and explain some bigger issues overall that may umbrella other problems they’re having…like grammar ‘n stuff. The problem is, they’re having troubles with writing in the first place so it’ll most likely take a longer time to explain everything that they need to hear, especially to put it in a way that they’ll understand and will motivate them to write and revise their future papers as well. With bad papers it becomes extremely easy to point out everything that needs fixing and overlook what is working for the paper. I know personally that with bad papers I want to get straight to the point of fixing things and I forget to tell them what they’re doing right.
With the pretty good papers, on the other hand, there are more subtle problems. In class today it took us nearly the entire class time to figure out that the student needed to have a thesis to fix all of the other problems in the paper (and that, thanks to Dr. Rogers, was pretty clearly spelled out for us anyway). When reading papers that work well it’s really easy to get caught up in all the good things and it becomes more difficult to dig and come up with answers to what the student should fix. I know that when I try to explain how something should be better my mind usually goes to the hang up of “that’s just how it should be because it…sounds better that way.” I have noticed that the same thing happens when I’m trying to explain a grammar rule to someone that doesn’t grasp it quite as easily as I have. Pointing out problems with interpretation or overall purpose of the paper presents major stumbling and stuttering potential on my part. Aside from all of this, however, the pretty good papers are still pretty good. They have a lot going for them and it’s easier to be nitpicky because you know that it’ll make them a good writer and they can handle it. The feeling of being overwhelmed and trying to sort out a huge list of problems with the paper is either minimized or eliminated.
Another factor that goes into the difficulty of tutoring papers is the amount of response a tutee is having. For me, establishing a rapport or friendly-like feeling with the tutee when they first sit down puts me in a mood where I’m willing to work with them and am more likely to spend more time explaining or helping them with their major issues. Their papers may be good or bad, but the difficulty of helping them seems to decrease. If, as is very often the case with students who are required to go to the Writing Center, they’re sitting back and not caring about whatever I’m explaining to them no matter how chipper or full of sunshine I am, I tend to just say “fix it this way” and send them off. Perhaps not the best way to go…but it certainly cuts down on the talking-to-a-wall feeling, which makes life easier.

On Mishaps

Now, I had a sinking suspicion that the excellent papers might outrun the terrible ones in the race to make me feel like a useless lump. This occurred to me while I was pondering my own freshman English class, in which I was “politely encouraged” to visit the Writing Center. I brought in something sharp and polished, ready to be turned in, and looked expectantly at the tutor. He shifted uncomfortably. Awkward praise was offered, minute grammatical preferences were exchanged, and I left with his signature and a mild sense of annoyance.

“Well. That wasn’t very helpful.”

I’m not sure to whom I did this, but I would like to formally apologize. This scenario sucks.
Poorly written papers are easier to work with than their well-composed counterparts. With the exception of the stray ESL paper (which can confound me in determining where to start,) there’s a lot more material to talk about and a lot more advice I feel comfortable in giving. I feel obligated to do more for any student than look their work up and down, stamp a smiley face on it and send him on his way, but some of the better written papers – especially this early in the semester – just don’t need much help.

I try not to waste a student’s time, so these sessions tend to be shorter than the rest. I make sure to cover my bases, but I’m not going to drag it out if there just isn’t much to be done. My mistake, though, is in assuming quality means absence of error.
I got an excellent piece of writing in the DELC last night. The ideas were clear, coherent and well-expressed. Grammar errors were minimal, and while I caught a handful of them, I was told later on that I had missed a few things, too. After a night spent explaining basic grammatical rules and ferreting out obvious mistakes, the subtle ones were lost on me. I’m irritated with myself for doing the student no favors in not being more aggressive in the session.

The one before it, in contrast, was a cake-walk. Independent clause, comma splice, maybe flesh this out more, maybe go into more detail here, this expression is good, how do you feel? Easy. I was confident, the student was attentive, we both learned something and walked away feeling productive. I felt useful. With a student closer to my level of literacy, I find myself fumbling uncertainly. It’s unpleasant.

Am I up in the night or is this a common occurrence?

Pretty good? That's pretty objective.

What constitutes a pretty good paper? I mean is it just grammar and punctuation issues? Or is it perfect grammatically, but has some minor structural issues? What out of these is easier to tutor?
I think it depends on the tutee. If the tutee is looking for grammatical help and that's all, then I guess a pretty good paper is one with those issues and no others.
There is a larger issue at work here and it has to do with the writing process in general. Our ideal is to be involved in the writing process from the beginning, so a pretty good paper would be one that we have helped the student with from the origin. However, this is the ideal and not very often the reality.
It also depends on the tutee saying things like "This is due in an hour" or "I have three weeks to work on this." This changes what our role is in terms of the paper. "Due in an hour" means that we have to basically perform triage. "Due in three weeks" means that we have time to work on the process of writing and development of the paper as a whole.
I know that several times I have gone into the writing center with a pretty good paper and I just needed some guidance in terms of organization or flow. I think that asking the tutee exactly what they want is an excellent starting point. The paper itself may be pretty good, but the tutee may be seeking excellence.
I also see how the paper we read in class could be considered "pretty good." Conversely, it could be considered mediocre. It's all relative and as tutors we need to be conscious of what our tutees are asking for. The paper we read in class might be pretty good for a lower level undergraduate class, but not for a master's class or an upper-division class. We should always be aware of what class the paper is for. What's good enough for one may not be good enough for all.
I think that our greatest gift as tutors is the ability to be subjective about what we tell our tutees. Just as LEAP students need more help with grammar and syntax, other students need more help with structure and organization and we have the ability to distinguish these things.
I still think the best thing is to question the tutee as much as possible to get out of them their purpose in coming to tutoring.
I don't really have anything else to add to this so...

Help the author

I’ve probably written a paper or two in my day that was soooooo horrible that there seemed to be no other alternative except for starting over. If I were presented with a student’s paper that compared to one of my early papers, after howling inside at the welling pain of remembrance, I would try to emphasize that everything written is a start. No matter what the plethora of problems may be, the student has still presented some ideas with whatever they have written.
Besides a good start, there are always ways to address a mass of disorganization. As long as the student’s feelings and opinions are valued above my own vain attempts to correct them then I think we could get along fine. In some way, customized to the student, I would let them know that even with their wave of ideas, some refining organization and editing may be needed for the benefit of whoever will read their paper next, especially their professor. I would negotiate what the purposes of coming to the writing center are, and looking over the paper, I would explain that by working together we would be able to improve the paper as we improve the writer. I hope that by gently suggesting ideas for reorganizing and prompting some good brainstorming that the tutee may not be too offended.
However, what if the writer has written something that seems slightly offensive to me? Even offensive topics contain amazing grammar and organization at times. I like to look at as many points of view of others that I can. I try to perceive what they are thinking. Nevertheless, I am open in my opinions and I will play devil’s advocate if the occasion requires. If a tutee’s paper were really that offensive, I would play the part of several different points of view and explain how others may see the paper. Yes, the author has a need to express their own ideas, but I think that what ideas to share depend on who the audience is. In addition, we would both need to consider how the professor might receive the potentially offensive ideas.
Overall, I do think that it is important to improve the paper as well as the writer. If the author walks away from me with a better idea of how to present their ideas, I think I can handle that. Accomplishing the task will be a challenge indeed. As I have watched other tutors I have noticed that there are many things that they seem to do very similarly. Sometimes it is as if we are robotically helping people to write more and more like everybody else. I want to learn how to conserve originality at the same time with helping the author.

New prompt

I think Devon's post is a good place to start this week. What do you all think? Is it harder to tutor a pretty good paper than a pretty bad paper? Why or why not?

Eric: Thank you for using the word "horrid."

I'm excited because I now have tutoring experience to reflect upon!
I think receiving a really bad paper really isn't all that bad of a situation. This gives us a chance to lead the tuttee in the right direction, get them off to a good start.. We can use the writing process that we are so familiar with in the right order instead of editing, rearranging, and rewriting certain parts of another paper. Our purpose is to help the writer become better at writing, so maybe helping them with how to begin a paper and create an outline will help them even more than just rearranging things.
If I ever receive a really awful paper, I will reflect back on writing this blog and remain true to my words: I will find something that is good and strong in the paper. I would refer to the paper as a good rough draft and help the writer in expanding ideas and making an outline.
Today, I received a paper that was actually pretty good. In comparison to other papers I saw today, it was well-organized, had a good voice, and was only speckled with grammatical errors. To be honest, I thought assisting this student was a lot more difficult than assisting some of the students that were having a hard time with their writing.
Nothing in the paper was screaming, “Hey! Look at me! I need help!” I feel that every paper can always be improved, but I couldn't figure out what kind of advise to give her. We clarified her introduction, perfected her thesis statement, and tried to find areas that she could expand on. But I was struggling. I was staring at the essay for some sort of an answer, then looking to her for answers. She didn't have any questions or concerns...she just needed me to edit and sign her paper. I felt much more lost than I would have had I been given a disastrous essay.
I entirely agree that editing an offensive paper has nothing to do with our purpose as tutors. We are objective, unbiased guides on the writer's journey to turn in a paper. We offer assistance in writing skill and that is where our influence ends.
This is where I place myself in my role as a tutor. I am here to help, I offer up my knowledge of the English language and all its complexities to share with those in need. I am here to help fellow writers improve themselves, challenge themselves, and inspire something within them. I am not here to rub my techniques or opinions onto writers or their papers. My purpose had absolutely nothing to do with the papers I am reading and revising. My purpose has nothing to do with the writer's opinions. I am here to enrich the writer so they can enrich their writing. This is the point.

Warning: The opinions expressed in this essay/paper are solely of the writer and do not necessarily represent those of the tutor!

Good question. I have had a few papers in my tutoring experience that I can honestly say needed to be written over again. So, what have I done? I usually have taken a minute or two after I read it and I begin to think of what to tell my student. I just stare at the paper. It seems like I'm still reading the paper, so the student doesn't know I am actually thinking about my response to this terrible paper. LOL! But seriously, I do need a minute to think about the strengths of the paper. Even if there's just one, I still try and pull that out so I can show the student what to continue building on. By the time I have read the paper, I usually would have asked what kind of paper he or she is writing and who is his/her audience? I ask the audience one b/c I've noticed that a lot of Eng 1010 and 2010 students write papers/reports with the professor in mind. They don't always read the assignment directions. I tell my students that this paper is a good start towards a very good paper. Usually, focus is the big issue for the students that I tutor. My students come from a diverse background and usually have been through many tough times. They like to tell their experiences in essays/papers to make their work more personal. Sometimes, I must remind them what the professor really wants. Sometimes, you have to bring the student back and make them focus.

I have honestly can't think of a time that I have had an offensive paper come my way but I know it's coming. What will I do when that happens? My answer is in the next paragraph.

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe I have had an offensive paper in my position before. I know some of my own papers have been somewhat controversial. Maybe it is because at the end of the day I am a tutor and the essay/paper is the student's. That's it! I do have moments when I have wanted to tell the student that he/she has wrong information on the paper. Sometimes it is that the paper just doesn't make sense. But what is the thing that makes my job easier and harder? It is when the student comes in to see me and he/she tells me what they need help with.
That's it! If he/she asks for grammatical help, then that's all I help with. I will not go all out and try to "rewrite" a paper. If a student comes in and asks me if his or her paper "sounds good", then I will read it (after asking what the paper is about and what is the assignment, etc) and give the student my opinion, then showing them what to build on. You know what, maybe I have read tons of offensive papers. But the thing about it is that I am honestly not interested in the paper. I am just doing my job. I'm not here to tell the student that he/she is wrong. I am here to help teach the student why this has to be written like this and so on and so. I know this sounds bad but this is how I feel. I do care about how the paper is written, what the subject is, etc. But I care about this for tutoring purposes only.

Maybe I should make stickers that I can place on my student's papers that say:

WARNING: The views expressed in this essay/paper are solely those of the writer and do not necessarily represent those of the tutor!

- Joel Cardenas

PS: I'm copyrighting that!

On Contingency Plans

You know, when I "applied" for the tutoring position (I use the phrase in the loosest possible sense, as the entire ordeal was little more than happy coincidence,) I was unaware that I was signing up for work in the public relations department. That's cool, though. I'm up for something new.

Really, I hadn't considered how much muckety-muck might arise from things like manners and hurt feelings. It hadn't occurred to me - for whatever reason - that I might get a paper riddled with offensive half-truths, something so delicate as to force me to step lightly. I'm a systematic individual and somehow presumed there would be a fail-proof formula to follow when tutoring, a scientific method for aspiring writers. What would make me think such a thing is anyone's guess.

I don't particularly fear the really terrible essays. I think I can find a friendly way to say hey, great draft, why don't we take this, this and this and start working on construction? "Great draft" seems to be the key phrase to avoid offense and keep the session flowing. I think I can handle convoluted organization, clashing ideas, unclear introductions and, yes, even grievous grammatical error without too much concern; it's the threat of the offensive that worries me.

I'm not sure there's any graceful way to point out a student has presented me something dripping with overt racism. I'm not sure how to sidle off to one side and inform Claire hey, I think we might have ongoing sexual abuse. I know these instances will probably prove themselves rare, if I see them at all, but the point having been raised, I feel it's a legitimate concern. I'm glad we went over it in class, even if I have yet to see a case-by-case procedural guide laid in front of me. (Hint hint.) I suppose it's the sort of unusual event you're best off handling one at a time, and I'm sure experience will impart valuable insight at.. some point or another, but for now, it does intimidate me.

I'm also glad old professors were brought up. Now I will actively remind myself not to run my mouth. Learning to shut my trap: check.

I think I can manage. I'm a little nervous, of course, but it helps to remind myself that I am not a brain surgeon and no one ever died from an offensive essay.* If I screw up, it's okay. It happens. It's to be avoided, but it happens.

*Note: Does not include Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

Well this is bad...

So what’s so bad? The fact that I completely spaced and didn’t get the week two blog entry finished before the week three prompt showed up? Or the imaginary essay in question? Probably both, but we’ll focus on the essay since five hundred words is nowhere near enough to contain the excuse as to why this post is a little late. Oh well, got to get into the habit somehow.

I was also a little caught up with not being able to go to the Sheepdog Championship trials.

Anwyay. All in all my focus during the spring semester of tutoring seemed to shift between bettering the paper and bettering the writer. It seemed to adjust according to each session and according to such variables like how many essays I had already read that day, if I had had a stressful situation earlier…the list could go on. But during this semester my mind will be more focused on bettering the writer—it’s easy to get caught up in the mechanics of a paper, but fixing the paper sometimes does little to help with future papers. True, some people learn through visuals and can pick up on certain recurring issues in their won writing, but for the most part students don’t often think like that. The student is almost always focused solely on making that paper better, so to balance that the tutor’s role should be focusing on bettering the writer.

But sometimes an essay is just…bad. Really bad. I have yet to come across an essay so bad that the student would need to start it over, but there have been a few very close. Usually I start off that particular part of the conversation with asking what sort of organization is going on in the paper. If the student can’t answer that question or fluffs around it, then comes the fun part of trying to nudge the student in the right direction, building up the conversation to the point where the student is restructuring the entire paper. Although again, it does depend on the session. Some tutees are perfectly fine with being told that they need to start all over again (granted those are usually smaller papers for serious students), and others would be deeply offended.

Speaking of deeply offended, there have been several papers that have come my way where I think I should have felt that way. Fortunately I’ve worked with enough offense to not get offended except in the most serious cases so such papers hardly faze me personally. But I have to keep in mind that I’m not the person grading it. If the professor eventually reading the offensive paper is fine with it, then I generally leave the offensive parts as is. I haven’t come across anything too radical, but so far it seems the offense is just bringing up the writer’s voice and thoughts, and criticizing those elements too far may stem the flow irreversibly. It’s the student’s paper, the student’s views. We do live in a free country that allows, for the most part, free speech, so who am I to tell someone that they are thinking wrong? Unless that has the very large potential of leading to danger then not me.

And when the writer warns me ahead of time then all the better.

First Tutor Observation

Hi all. Someone pointed out that the first tutor observation is due only two days after the WC opens. Let's move that due date to 9/16.