Yesterday I observed three sessions in the writing center.
The tutor was Molly Peel. As soon as I sat down with her, she told me something
along the lines of, “I just started tutoring this semester and sometimes it’s
awkward because I’m a little shy!” That was comforting. I’m a little shy
sometimes. And it was really awkward
during some parts of the sessions. For example. The first girl who came in was
a freshman and, by freshman, I mean that as soon as I saw her I knew she was a
freshman. I’m pretty sure she was hungover, too. Her hair looked really bad. That’s
not the awkward part. The awkward part was that she had no idea what she wanted
to do with her paper, or what was wrong with it, or what it was really about. Molly
was really patient. She asked to identify parts of the paper where she had analysis. The girl couldn’t do it. It
was honestly painful to watch. The paper was about how Coachella had changed
her life.
Anyways.
The next session was even worse because it was football player. Apparently,
student athletes are required to come to the writing center once a week—they take
it for credits (!?!). So he had nothing to work on. We talked about the game
last Friday and how we should have played better. Even though we won, he said
that they should have scored at least 30 points over the other team. He plays
defense, though, so I guess he did his job pretty well. Molly seemed to know
how to talk about football, so that was good! I was super uncomfortable!
No one
showed up for the third session. That turned out to be a good time for us to
talk. I got to ask her what a normal session for her is like, what kind of
assignments she most commonly works with, and what kind of weird situations she’s
been in. She said once a girl started crying because she wrote an essay about
her dead father. Yikes. I hope that never happens to me because I’m one of
those people who doesn’t know how comfort people who cry. I should work on
that. But Molly was super helpful and I think I learned a lot from her. It
helped that I could relate with her as a sort-of shy person. Hopefully I can
co-tutor with her next week.
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