Response to "Hindsight and Advice"

I'm not entirely sure what I would have liked to know at the beginning of the semester that I now know. I think this is a good thing, though. I feel like the orientation and first few classes more than sufficiently prepared me to tutor.

I give incoming tutors a few pieces of advice. First, do not be intimidated by the workshops. The workshops really scared me at first, and I wasn't able to do a good job of teaching them until I overcame that fear and became comfortable teaching them. I would also advice new tutors to not be intimidated by the tutoring process or by students. I would tell new tutors to be confident in their abilities; there's a reason you got this job. Finally, I would advise new tutors to have fun with the job. I found helping students to be extremely rewarding, and it is really fun to see the variety of papers and thoughts. Sure, a lot of papers are pretty dull, but many are really interesting. I learned quite a bit about subjects unfamiliar to me just by reading through students' papers. In this way, both the student and the tutor are bettered through the tutoring experience.