Friday, September 14, 2007

Awkward Tutee

So Bryan and I had a very weird tutee come into the center on Wednesday. The kid was a freshman working on his first assignment for his English 103 class, the gist of which was to write a four-to-six-page paper on an issue within a community of which you belong and some possible solutions to the problem. First, the kid was rather unresponsive to our questions; he would just say "I don't know" to pretty much everything. After some time and some prying, though, we were able to get some ideas flowing.

The issues we had with his writing abilities were just things that are typical of most freshman trying to delve into college writing: coming up with ideas, developing those ideas, organizing, etc. What was difficult for me in this situation was the tutee himself, not so much his problems with writing. Overall, he was just very awkward, and his hygiene wasn't exactly up to par. He definitely ate a scab in front of me and Bryan... Anyway, this social problems and some of his comments (like "No one wants me in their community" and "I don't have many friends") made me worry about how well he is adjusting to college life and how happy he is here. Now, I understand why he is having difficulties at college, as I mentioned above, but I don't think it's my place to tell him this. At the same time, I hate to see someone in his situation, even though I do realize that's the way life is. I guess I am just wondering if there is someone on campus that could help this kid and if I should direct him there. The overall question is do we as tutors have a responsibily or even simply the right to go beyond helping tutees with their writing when we know there is a larger problem going on?

1 comment:

T. F. said...

I really hope this kid comes back. Part of being a good tutor is about being a sounding board and this kid seems to really need one.