First Session
Recently I tutored my first session
and luckily got a student who actually wanted to be there. The student I worked
with had been coming to get help with her papers throughout the semester, but
by choice rather than requirement. The paper she brought in for this particular
session was one that she had worked on previously with other tutors and was really
only looking for someone to double check her use of citations. After reviewing her in-text citations and
works cited pages I found little to be wrong; I suggested a few corrections,
but this probably took all of ten minutes.
Not wanting to end the session
early, I asked the student if she would mind reviewing over her paper once last
time with me. Though she had already worked with several tutors on the assignment
and read it aloud a million times, she agreed. After discussing the main points she made in
the paper, we began to go through it sentence by sentence. She seemed to have
no problem getting her ideas on paper and there were no major organizational
issues, so I decided to focus on improving the clarity and overall flow of her
paragraphs.
It seemed like time flew as we only
made it onto the second page of her paper when I realized there were only ten
minutes left till close. I asked her if there was anything else she would like
to go over before we finished up and she asked about a future assignment which
my mentor and I gave some advice on. At the end of the session I assured the
student that I felt her paper was fairly strong and that I hoped the session
was helpful. With a smile she thanked me before leaving.
After finishing the session, I
began to second guess a few of the things that I told the student, but later
decided to stop over-analyzing. I think it is hard sometimes not to be
self-critical in these situations since we don’t want to hinder the student in
anyway and many of us are still learning how to do our jobs. I guess confidence
will probably just come with more experience.
Anyways, I would say my first
session = Success!
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