Hindquarters and Head Lice...I mean, Hindsight and Advice :)

Looking back, there really isn't anything I wish I knew when I started out as a tutor other than how much I would love being a writing tutor. If I had known how much fun I would have teaching other students, I would have applied at the Writing Center a lot sooner. I love working with the people there and have enjoyed helping the students learn how to improve their writing. The look on the student's faces when they get a concept or understand how revision works is priceless for me.

Sure, I've made mistakes along the way in becoming a writing tutor, but I'm glad they happened during the semester because I'm pretty sure I would not have learned it any other way. All the experiences during my first semester as a tutor have really helped me develop into the tutor that I am today.

If I were to give any advice to new tutors, it would be not to play Scattergories. Okay, that's not really what I would say, but seriously, don't play Scattergories. 

On a more serious note...new tutors. It is important to remember that you can do this. This job isn't as scary as you think. You get to deal with a lot of different situations, errors, students, papers, problems, etc. But rest easy knowing there are people in the Writing Center that you can get help from. If you need a second opinion, there are seasoned tutors all around that you can ask. Don't be afraid to ask questions and especially, don't be afraid to make mistakes because lemmie tell ya, you are going to make them. And it's okay. Get help when you need it, and essentially, DON'T PANIC. You'll be just fine. 

What I Wish I'd Known and Advice for New Tutors

What do I know now that I wish I'd known at the beginning of the semester?  I'm not sure, exactly.  I think most of what I know must be obtained through experience.  I guess what I think new tutors should know is that they'll come to know a lot by working in the Writing Center.

There are several bits of advice that I'd like to give out:

1) Be compassionate toward the students you tutor.  Many of them are keenly aware of the fact that they need help.  Seeking help can be an act of bravery.  Students deserve not only your assistance but also your respect.

2) Tutoring ESL students can be extremely draining, so be sure to pace yourself, take an extra breath when necessary, and be aware of your limitations.

3) Study the workshops.  Memorize the material.  Practice it.  Understanding and being able to communicate this material will not only help you when you're managing a workshop but also in most ENGL 955 and ESL tutoring sessions (and many more).

4) Keep your ears and eyes open while you tutor--not just to catch grammar mistakes in papers and problematic thinking patterns in students you tutor, but also to catch the precious gems of knowledge and insight that each of them has.  You can learn a lot from what they have to say and share.

Working in the Writing Center is a learning opportunity for tutors at least as much as for the students we tutor.

Study Habits?

Being a tutor has been very beneficial for me this semester. Through teaching others how to write better, I feel like my own writing has improved in leaps and bounds. I've started to keep a sharp eye out for all the little mistakes that students make regularly in my own writing. I have also learned some neat skills, like reading the introduction and the conclusion right after one another, that help me make sure I'm on point with my essays. 

Interestingly enough, I've found myself doing my homework a lot more often than usual. I've learned how to better manage my time and get things done in a timely fashion. It's really interesting because this semester has been super duper fun for me and I felt like I have learned a ton. Tutoring has also helped my self esteem go up because it gives me the confidence in my smarts to know I can teach others things they don't understand. 

Overall, I'm grateful for the opportunity to be a tutor! I've learned so much through teaching others.

Last blog post!

I have been thinking about this prompt for a few days now, and I still have not been able to come up with anything that I wish I would have known at the beginning of the semester. My semester was relatively easy, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. There's really nothing that I could have been told at the beginning of the semester that would have made it any easier than it was. Unrelated to any college classes, I wish I would have known that Obama would win so that I could have made a more substantial bet about the election results with my dad. I also wish that I would have known that I was going to get into the nursing program to avoid a lot of unnecessary worrying throughout the first few months of the semester. The last thing I wish I would have been reminded of is that my "free two-day shipping for college students for a year" was going to expire in September because I definitely didn't take advantage of that. Regrets.

For the incoming tutors for next year, I would just advise them to pay as much attention as they can to each discussion because it can help them become better tutors. I would also tell them to pay attention to the tutors with experience because they can give great ideas regarding tutoring methods. I'm not sure whether or not my advice would actually help because I believe the greatest growth for my tutoring career came from actually starting tutoring and slowly realizing what more I needed to work on week by week.

"'People' is not a course at this university, young man!"

When I applied to be a Writing Center tutor I had what I would consider to be average expectations: In addition to learning more keenly the rules of grammar, my primary expectation was that I would refine my skills as a teacher.  I also expected to take home a fat paycheck twice weekly.  I must confess that, after a semester of attempting to do so via various forms of chicanery, treachery, and, let's face it, tomfoolery, I don't seem any closer to that goal than when I started.

What I found instead was something that I value a great deal more: An improved appreciation for the hopes, struggles, and striving of others.  In addition, to answer the first question of the prompt directly, my experience tutoring has improved my writing.  Simply put, metacognition is awesome.  Watching it in action has been rewarding, motivating, and, interestingly enough, humbling.

One of my favorite aspects of studying both literature and philosophy is that I can apply the lessons of each to myself.  There's no purpose in working out complex epistemological theories if we don't investigate our assumptions about our own knowledge.  Likewise, to observe the ostentation and abuses of the well-to-do in The Great Gatsby without considering how our own attitudes might coincide with their own (given the right circumstances) is to miss out on a valuable opportunity for personal growth.  In the same vein, learning about how I invent the university as I write, how revising the language I use to express my ideas is part of an act of self-revision, and about authoring myself instead of relying on the supposed authority of others have left lasting impressions on me.  Whether I have improved my writing or not I can't say--that's for others to judge.  But I can say with confidence that I have improved the way I look at my writing.  I am more aware of the questions I need to ask myself when reviewing my work.  In particular, I have always struggled with asserting my own convictions about my topic.  It is so much easier to simply fall into the rhythm of typical responses, academic jargon, and the pretense of objectivity.  Now that I'm more aware of the reasons why I fall into these rhythms, I have found myself experiencing a severe anxiety when I do so.  The moment my thesis or a paragraph dissembles into what-my-teacher-wants or language-patterns-of-my-discouse mumbo-jumbo, I can feel the cognitive dissonance eating its way up through my spine.

What's the point of this last paragraph?  As I said in the one before it, watching metacognition in action has been three things: rewarding because I have had an opportunity to grow in areas I value; motivating because I want to improve and see a previously unseen path to it; and humbling because--though I hate to admit it--I have watched freshmen exhibit metacognitive awareness that I, a senior, am just learning about.  I have felt the shame of my academic pretenses and ignorance.  And I want to do something about them.

I have worked with so many unique individuals who have endeared themselves to me unknowingly this semester, from the young lady who wept as I read her paper about her recently-deceased mother to the young man who couldn't help but improve between sessions to the middle-aged mother who timidly tried her hand at creative writing and discovered that she was powerful.  Working with these students, I realize that we share in a community.  These students have a voice--and I'm not talking about their writing, but about the character of their actions and personalities.  Their voices and mine are not condensable to academic accomplishments alone.  People build their communities by their contributions of language, behavior, and disposition, and the academic community is no different.  I feel that I have too long been a student of the university and not the campus and that my education is incomplete as a consequence.

cross-pollination

When first reading this question, I initially thought, “Not really. I am the same person with, basically, the same set of belief systems about education and how I interact with other students, my professors, and my schoolwork has not changed since the beginning of the semester.” After honest evaluation, however, I have altered and improved as a student (I hope) in many ways because of my tutoring experience. Also my opinions about pedagogy and the approach composition teachers should aspire to have altered greatly. I once believed a good teacher is one who works hard, is well prepared, and comes to class with plenty of enthusiasm for their subject matter. I still believe that, but my experience as a tutor has taught me that more is required of a good composition teacher because what they teach and not just the way they teach their students affects the direction of the class. The curriculum teachers chose determines the kind of exposure students with have to quality writing, discussion-based interaction, and current ethical issues. Though I often struggle with feelings of inadequacy as a grad student because I thought that at this point in my life and career as a student I would be well versed in all areas of literature and have a wider breadth (even though I am grateful for the depth my classes have provided me with up unto this point) than I currently have. I agree with Hartwell’s suggestion to value grammar less than content, but I wish I knew more about what constitutes good writing. I recognize good writing when I see it and I can vouch for the “immersion” recommendation on how to improve my writing, but I just wish I were better than I am at this point. I am not excusing my own inadequacies in the form of a defense mechanism, I am just wrestling with my expectations of what education means. One of the reasons I am so attracted to writing is because the nature of it attracts a broad color of personalities with all sorts of varying opinions and values and good writers give rise to the beautiful, and often very ugly, essence of human nature that metacognition can recognize in ways that no other type of thought processes can. Wow, this is very convoluted. What I am trying to say is, and I have discussed this concept in my classes before but I am unaware of any terminology surrounding the subject, the more one is educated, the more isolated he or she becomes. So then isn’t a life devoted to education one that is devoted to separateness and otherness? I don’t know if these qualities necessarily constitute a better world. But if the powers of good writing and educating can be instilled to bridge the divide between richly cultured individuals then it is worthwhile. If so, how do I become one of these individuals? How do I teach others how to become one of these individuals? Just because the more I learn the more I realize the less I know, does not mean that I should be discouraged. Or should I? J  

slacker prompt

Considering it is the first of December and I am just now responding to this prompt, it has been an excessively busy semester. I have gone to school every semester, save two, since high school. In that time, I have gotten married and had two kids. I wouldn’t recommend it. Going to school is tough while trying to raise a young family and though each semester comes with its own set of difficulties, I have never worked while going to school. Now that I am it seems, as each day passes, I have less and less time to complete the smallest of tasks. Luckily, I thrive on last minute panic. The same kind of panic we discussed on Friday. I do well with deadlines which is probably why this blog has been so difficult for me. It slips constantly to the bottom of my priority list. Anyway, Thanksgiving was wonderful. My parent’s invited us over which is great because my sister’s a vegetarian and makes wonderful dishes full of vegetables. So this year we ate turkey cooked by my dad, which was moist and delicious, and stuffed peppers with tofu and six varieties of beans and rice cooked by my sister. My mom’s dishes were delicious too, but her stuffing was incomparable to my father-in-laws. I’ll have to make his recipe two years from now.

On the whole, Thanksgiving was wonderful. I made some crunchy sweet potatoes that were tasty. I liked not being limited to having only traditional Thanksgiving foods. We had pleasant conversations and smiles abounded. I took the entire day off from writing and working of any kind. That was in and of itself a small miracle. I hope that suffices for my slacker prompt.      

Last Prompt: Hindsight and Advice

So. Here we are at the end of the term.  I have two related questions for you.

First: what do you wish you'd known now that you didn't know at the beginning of the semester?

Second: what advice do you have for the incoming tutors next year?

slacker prompt

Considering it is the first of December and I am just now responding to this prompt, it has been an excessively busy semester. I have gone to school every semester, save two, since high school. In that time, I have gotten married and had two kids. I would not recommend it. Going to school is tough while trying to raise a young family and though each semester comes with its own set of difficulties, I have never worked while going to school. Now that I am it seems, as each day passes, I have less and less time to complete the smallest of tasks. Luckily, I thrive on last minute panic. The same kind of panic we discussed on Friday. I do well with deadlines which is probably why this blog has been so difficult for me. It slips constantly to the bottom of my priority list. Anyway, Thanksgiving was wonderful. My parent’s invited us over which is great because my sister’s a vegetarian and makes wonderful dishes full of vegetables. So this year we ate turkey cooked by my dad, which was moist and delicious, and stuffed peppers with tofu and six varieties of beans and rice cooked by my sister. My mom’s dishes were delicious too, but her stuffing was incomparable to my father-in-laws. I’ll have to make his recipe two years from now.

On the whole, Thanksgiving was wonderful. I made some crunchy sweet potatoes that were tasty. I liked not being limited to having only traditional Thanksgiving foods. We had pleasant conversations and smiles abounded. I took the entire day off from writing and working of any kind. That was in and of itself a small miracle. I hope that suffices for my slacker prompt.      

Slacker Prompt

Considering it is the first of December and I am just now responding to this prompt, it has been an excessively busy semester. I have gone to school every semester, save two, since high school. In that time, I have gotten married and had two kids. I wouldn’t recommend it. Going to school is tough while trying to raise a young family and though each semester comes with its own set of difficulties, I have never worked while going to school. Now that I am it seems, as each day passes, I have less and less time to complete the smallest of tasks. Luckily, I thrive on last minute panic. The same kind of panic we discussed on Friday. I do well with deadlines which is probably why this blog has been so difficult for me. It slips constantly to the bottom of my priority list. Anyway, Thanksgiving was wonderful. My parent’s invited us over which is great because my sister’s a vegetarian and makes wonderful dishes full of vegetables. So this year we ate turkey cooked by my dad, which was moist and delicious, and stuffed peppers with tofu and six varieties of beans and rice cooked by my sister. My mom’s dishes were delicious too, but her stuffing was incomparable to my father-in-laws. I’ll have to make his recipe two years from now.

On the whole, Thanksgiving was wonderful. I made some crunchy sweet potatoes that were tasty. I liked not being limited to having only traditional Thanksgiving foods. We had pleasant conversations and smiles abounded. I took the entire day off from writing and working of any kind. That was in and of itself a small miracle. I hope that suffices for my slacker prompt.