Winter Semester 2011 Wrap Up

Looking back on the semester this year I found that I was able to learn more about how other people tutored so I could compare, contrast, and understand the different ways of helping others with writing. While I know that many consultants thought I was grading and evaluating their performance during sessions, I would like to clarify one more time that I was not. Instead, I was observing (as we all did as RHT 320 students) and trying to see how the center functions as a whole by understanding each of the parts. In my observations I saw incredible progress, thoughts, compassion and lots of great peer collaboration. As a recap, I will summarize and generalize a few sessions that I have observed either by directly sitting at the table or through observation at the staff table throughout this semester. All in all, almost every time I saw a difficult situation either because the client was hostile, indifferent, confused or just plain hard to work with, the consultant reacted in the best possible way by either being infinitely patient, encouraging, and/or understanding. The wide range in which I can see each consultant work makes me really excited and proud that I work with others who can be flexible yet firm in their commitment to tutoring. This semester I saw a client get defensive and the consultant ignored the negative reaction and calmly continued to work, another client go through half the session saying "I'm confused, I'm not sure what is going on" and the consultant rewording and rephrasing until she was blue in the face all the while smiling until the client finally said, "oh, I understand now, it makes much more sense." It is always easier to remember the outlier sessions, so I want to also say that I saw many sessions run "according to plan" in the sense that the client and consultant initiated pure collaboration that left both parties refreshed and excited about writing. While I can compliment the writing center staff all day long, I also would like to suggest an area of improvement that I have noticed in the past few weeks. Sherry predicted earlier in the semester during our professional development day that with the end of semester arriving, we would be bombarded with appointments and she warned against this coping strategy when we were exhausted with clients: editing. Occasionally, in the past few weeks, I have seen consultants furiously scribble edit notations on a student's draft. In one specific instance I saw the client was browsing the internet with his smartphone while the consultant had the draft and pencil in hand. I want to think that maybe the client was looking up information relevant to the paper, but I had a feeling that was not the case. Just remember, we are not doing the client or ourselves any favors when we shrug our shoulders, drag the paper into our circle, collect the pencil from the jar at the center of the table (Ron organized that for us) and sit intently trying to ignore the gross lack of clarity, focus, and organization just so we can 'get through' the session. In fact, today, I had 4 back to back appointments and most would agree that after that many appointments he/she would be tired. I thought I was done for the day so I sat down in front of my session logs and breathed a sigh of relief. Actually, I didn't even get through my breath when Ron pointed out another appointment, fortunately, my last. Even still, I was not even able to catch my breathe before I had to restart my brain and get back into tutor mode. Normally, I can make it through a session okay because I ask a few good questions to get the client thinking more about his/her paper. This session was different. First, the client was not really sure what the professor was asking. Second, the client did have good content but a weak thesis to tie it all together and knew it. The client kept asking me "what should I do? How should I word my thesis?" It would be so easy to read the rest of the paper, collect the main points and say, "your thesis should say....." It would be just that, too easy. If I gave the client the answers and a thesis based on how I understand the information then she would still be struggling once she got home to incorporate the information because the thesis was not hers .  The same kind of struggle goes on when we edit a paper for a client. The mistakes clients are making will not be corrected because they are not required to be cognizant of the errors and understand why they are wrong, we just tell them it is wrong. Just yesterday I saw a fellow consultant who collaborated in a session with me point out a few grammar mistakes to the client who then immediately found the a majority of the other similar mistakes as he continued reading. It was so rewarding to see the progression and improvement of writing in just one session. Not only was he more aware of his comma use when using transitions, he also became aware of his audience when he found he was missing descriptive words. I think tutoring is a hard job. If there are times when you cannot work anymore because of fatigue or illness, please talk with another consultant because we are all really nice and always willing to help if we can. I can also attest to the kindness of our staff because just today I had another consultant take an appointment tomorrow so I could move my schedule around. Thank you Phil! If you see something that you like or don't like or want to see happen, this is a great place to share those thoughts and feelings with everyone at the writing center. I just wanted to share all the great things that I saw this semester and my experience as a consultant. I have to give a big thank you to all the consultants for making this semester fun and enjoyable! Peace, Genevieve p.s. If you haven't posted on this blog yet, it isn't too late!