Co-Tutoring Reflection

The previous week, Calvin and I agreed that for the last co-tutoring session, I would take the reigns on tutoring while he would stand by. Only jumping in when he felt something I missed needed to be addressed. The first session was one of Calvin's regular students. The same one who came in at the same time the past two weeks. Last week she brainstormed during the session getting the first two paragraphs done. This week, she came in with what she said was the second draft of the same assignment. I went ahead and read her assignment out loud, stopping whenever I needed to address something in her paper. I asked her if there was anything specific she wanted me to look over. She said there wasn't. Her grammar was fine, but just as it was with her previous assignments, she did have some clarity issues. When I felt a sentence could be restructured, I would stop and ask her how she could reword it. She would stop and think, and if she couldn't come up with anything on her own, I would give her some of my own suggestions. One particular issue I noticed with her paper was the fact that she tended to be wordy in some spots. In other words, she would use several words to describe one thing when one word would suffice. For example, she would say "disappeared off the face of the earth" when the word "gone" would do just fine. She was aware of this and said she did it mainly to help her reach her word count. I told her that in writing, less is more, and it will make her writing more succinct and effective. The rest of the session went on in the same manner, and when I finished up, she thanked me, told Calvin she'll be back the next week.

The next student came in at 4PM. What he wanted to work on was something I never really had much experience with. He came in with three pages of writing. A printout of his Linkdin summary, a copy of his resume, and a letter of recommendation that he was told to write for himself. First I took a look at the summary. I asked him to give me some info on what people tend to look for in them. He told me the general format and said he modeled it after examples he found online. I noticed he was very generic with his words in his summary. I asked him if he was targeting a specific industry, and he said he was hoping to get into finance. I told him to think about the type of language that is used within the finance industry, and by using terminology commonly used in the field may help him stand out more. Next was his resume. From what I saw, I could tell that he put a good deal of work on it, and he told me that he had several people in the career center look at it. He asked me that everyone said the resume was flawless and only wanted me to look out for any typos. From my viewpoint, the resume was flawless. It was only a page long and everything was in bullet points and very straight forward. Next was his recommendation letter. He explained to me that his boss at his internship whom he wanted a recommendation from asked him to write it himself, and that when he was done, he'll proofread it and put his signature on it. Again, from what I saw I could tell he worked hard on it. The only issue I saw was one instance of a run-on sentence and a very minor typo. I gave him suggestions on splitting up his run on and pointed out the typo. After that Calvin took a look at the letter himself and agreed that there was nothing else that needed to be worked on. And with that, the session ended.