Why tutor?

In my limited experience, the writing process seems to be Thinking About Something Too Much, Writing Something I Hate, Writing Something I Like, Hating It Again Six Hours Later, a dose of Absolute Despair, Lowering My Expectations, and then ending up with Something I Can Live With. For a long time I was extremely private about my writing. Not because of some scandal or anything, just because I felt so ambivalent about my ability (or lack thereof) to write. Workshopping opened me up to criticism I expected and (even worse) praise. Most of what I Can Live With has come out of conversations I've had and discussions over word choice, structure, and accidental themes. Half of the time when someone pointed out something I had done - especially when it was apparently something good - I hadn't realized it when I was writing. Through these conversations I learned how to talk about my own writing, how to communicate creative choices I made, how to know when something was good and - most importantly - how to show myself mercy when something was bad.

The primary education system has always placed more emphasis on learning how to read than on learning how to write. I've personally found that I learn a lot more about how to read when I (attempt) to write, and vice versa. Essays in middle and high school are essentially about knowing where to regurgitate which pieces of information, and that whole situation is getting worse. No matter what level you're at writing-wise, the adjustment to the expectations and occasional freedoms of college writing takes some time.

There are lots of places within anyone's creative process (meaning the fluctuations of enthusiasm and misery) where the only thing you can really do to help yourself is to talk to someone else, to find out what could be better, to find out what is already good. Tutoring seems to be one of the best places to have that conversation.