It was a doozy
Holy moly (Faust Custoly),
Mad tutoring this week, already (yeah, this week...meaning yesterday, Tuesday, the first day of school this week). I finally experienced something that it seems like all of my colleagues have already experienced multiple times: vast stretches of uninterrupted tutoring sessions. It's just never happened to me before. But yesterday I jumped back and forth from the Writing Center to the DELC from 9:00-1:00, without stop. ESL, ENGL 1010, ENGL 2010, ENGL 900 and 955, Social Work, Social Problems, and even an OWL, all in addition to playing Lab Aide, answering visitors' questions, dealing with non-tutees who wanted to come in and print stuff for free, finding time to talk to Claire, checking the DELC and Writing Center inboxes continually, and inserting jokes and laughs with the coworkers in order to keep things fun and pleasant.
Yes, I most certainly felt nervous--or thought about the idea of nervousness at first--but somehow I just squashed it. I ignored it and I didn't have time for it. Neither did my tutees have time for me to be that way. I also quickly realized that all of my colleagues were just as nervous, if not far more (especially since most of them that day were brand new). In one particular session, I even had a tutee who was so visibly squeamish and afraid that I said to myself, "Man, what are you complaining about, Laikwan? Obviously everybody in this room is suffering more than you right now."
What was also funny was that I had about three different tutors observe my tutoring that day. Couldn't have dreamt of a more high-pressure day to perform. By 11:00 or 12:00, however, I was just cruising. Can't explain it. Just didn't have time to be thinking about myself so much. And as soon as that happened, I started to feel good. As soon as it stopped being about me, there was clarity of mind for me and engagement and excitement on the tutee's part.
Everything suddenly died at 1:00. I asked permission to go get myself my first meal of the day. After stuffing my face with a Philly Cheese Steak, everything was still dead. I did an OWL, commiserated with Claire and my colleagues, and called it a day two and a half hours later. We were excited, we were tired, and judging from my conversations with everybody, just about every one of us had encountered the very fears we had each anticipated, and yet we all were exhilirated and hopeful by the end of the day. Nay, the hope and exhiliration had come much earlier in that day for all of us, right in the midst of our toil and anxiety. It's kind of like that quote from Martha Graham or Isadora Duncan (one I'm about to butcher): observing people who went into a certain gym in New York, she noted how they would enter either innocently--unaware of the grind they were about to be put through--or with dread--anticipating their imminent suffering. Once inside, they would grimace, toil, suffer, and endure, yet always afterwards come out "looking purified."
Mad tutoring this week, already (yeah, this week...meaning yesterday, Tuesday, the first day of school this week). I finally experienced something that it seems like all of my colleagues have already experienced multiple times: vast stretches of uninterrupted tutoring sessions. It's just never happened to me before. But yesterday I jumped back and forth from the Writing Center to the DELC from 9:00-1:00, without stop. ESL, ENGL 1010, ENGL 2010, ENGL 900 and 955, Social Work, Social Problems, and even an OWL, all in addition to playing Lab Aide, answering visitors' questions, dealing with non-tutees who wanted to come in and print stuff for free, finding time to talk to Claire, checking the DELC and Writing Center inboxes continually, and inserting jokes and laughs with the coworkers in order to keep things fun and pleasant.
Yes, I most certainly felt nervous--or thought about the idea of nervousness at first--but somehow I just squashed it. I ignored it and I didn't have time for it. Neither did my tutees have time for me to be that way. I also quickly realized that all of my colleagues were just as nervous, if not far more (especially since most of them that day were brand new). In one particular session, I even had a tutee who was so visibly squeamish and afraid that I said to myself, "Man, what are you complaining about, Laikwan? Obviously everybody in this room is suffering more than you right now."
What was also funny was that I had about three different tutors observe my tutoring that day. Couldn't have dreamt of a more high-pressure day to perform. By 11:00 or 12:00, however, I was just cruising. Can't explain it. Just didn't have time to be thinking about myself so much. And as soon as that happened, I started to feel good. As soon as it stopped being about me, there was clarity of mind for me and engagement and excitement on the tutee's part.
Everything suddenly died at 1:00. I asked permission to go get myself my first meal of the day. After stuffing my face with a Philly Cheese Steak, everything was still dead. I did an OWL, commiserated with Claire and my colleagues, and called it a day two and a half hours later. We were excited, we were tired, and judging from my conversations with everybody, just about every one of us had encountered the very fears we had each anticipated, and yet we all were exhilirated and hopeful by the end of the day. Nay, the hope and exhiliration had come much earlier in that day for all of us, right in the midst of our toil and anxiety. It's kind of like that quote from Martha Graham or Isadora Duncan (one I'm about to butcher): observing people who went into a certain gym in New York, she noted how they would enter either innocently--unaware of the grind they were about to be put through--or with dread--anticipating their imminent suffering. Once inside, they would grimace, toil, suffer, and endure, yet always afterwards come out "looking purified."
posted by Laikwan at 10:31 AM
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