For me the thought that continues to worry me about peer
tutoring is communication. I’m afraid of two possibilities: not being able to
establish good communication in general and being unable to put important
themes into terms that the student can understand. Most of the readings we’ve
done this year talk about the importance of communication between tutor and
student. The Longman constantly gives examples of a hypothetical tutoring
session and most of the time those conversations seem like conversations I
could achieve. However, some of them are things that I wouldn’t know how to
deal with or would leave me mostly stumped.
Mostly I would say I’m afraid of failing the student. I fear
giving the student a negative experience with the writing center or with
learning/studying in general. I worry a lot about the distressed student who
comes in and is fairly uncooperative or unwilling to listen to the tutor because
they are there involuntarily or don’t believe in it (or are just college
students). I don’t actually know if this would end up being a problem for me as
it seems easy enough to just go through a text and make recommendations but I’m
worried about actually achieving the goals of the writing center.
My last concern is just about my ability. I’m worried about
drawing a blank and having nothing to say about a paper or being unable to
identify solutions for the paper’s problems. In general I’m just worried about
not being able to provide a good experience for the student and forming a
negative connection with writing for college or writing itself. I would hate to
be the person that turned a student from being confident in their own writing
and ultimately that is my biggest concern about working for the writing center
in the upcoming weeks.
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