Today was so nerve wreaking! It was my first day of tutoring, all I could think of was I hope that I could help these students with their writing. I didn’t know that I had any tutees; I was on the writing center’s website and noticed that my timeslots were filled. I had to email Ms. Boylan to find out if I actually had appointments and why I didn’t get any emails for those appointments. Turns out my name was misspelled, but it’s fixed now. I was mostly nervous because I didn’t get a chance to ask the tutees to email me their papers so I could look at them before our session. And I wasn’t sure how helping someone with their writing while they were looking over your shoulder would work out.
My three o’clock appointment didn’t want any specific help in any area; he just wanted someone to look over his paper. I did and he really did not any thing particularly weak about his writing otherwise than rearranging a few of his paragraphs his paper was fine.
When the time came for my second appointment of the day, I was pumped. I had gotten rid of my tutoring jitters and I was ready to help. However my Four O’clock appointment did not go so well. My tutee came in with a prompt for her paper that she did not understand had not brothered to ask the professor to explain the prompt to her. And according to our reading this is usually the case for ESL and international students but my tutee was American so I was little confused on why she didn’t ask. To make matters worse she did not have a draft or an outline. And she wanted me to give her a thesis for her paper. And she wanted me to explain the films that she saw for her class and her readings to her. I had no idea what those films were nor her readings and I was most certainly was not going to give her, her thesis. Instead I wondered if in such a case it would be okay to turn her away until she could produce at least an outline. Since I wasn’t sure I worked on getting her to write an outline with my help. After I explained what her professor was asking for, I had her explain the films to me and come up with a common theme and then had her relate the theme to the prompt. After which I asked what was the theme saying about American culture was and the way society saw women. After having a discussion on this commentary she was able to come up with a workable thesis from which she gave me several incidents from the different films and readings to back it up. I’m very thrilled I was about to help her but I hope this does not happen too often. It is hard to help someone when they are unprepared
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