3rd and 4th Observations

My third writing observation only lasted for a half hour. This is not the normal procedure for the writing center, but we weren't dealing with a normal writing center student. The student who came in was a graduate student and she was working on a mathematical paper for her independent study course. She had made a few changes to her paper and wanted the tutor to look over them for her and to make sure that her grammar in these changed sentences was correct. From the get go this wasn't a normal session. The girl didn't want to go paragraph by paragraph through her paper, and that was a good thing. Her paper was upwards of ten pages. Instead she had underlined the sentences to which she had made changes and just wanted to have the tutor look at those. So the tutor asked her to read these sentences aloud and he would help her as best he could. The first page went swell. We were helpful and everything was lovely. The second page was slightly harder to get through but we persevered. And then the third page. Oh the dreaded third page. The last sentence in the first paragraph on that page was underlined. In this sentence lay the horrid term "apply derivative formula". The tutor nor I had ever heard of this term before and were therefore completely confused as to whether the sentence should read "applied to..." or remain the way it was. We asked the student multiple question as to what exactly this formula was, but she couldn't exactly explain it. After spending several minutes on this conundrum the girl told us that she was thankful for our help but the session should end here. The rest of the paper only got more technical and we would be beyond our means in trying to help her. Our tutor offered her a different person she could try and talk to about the paper who worked in a different area. She said thank you and walked out the door. It was the most exhausting and uncomfortable session I had ever been a part of.

In my fourth observation, the tutor gave very specific suggestions to the girl. The student didn't seem to enjoy having her paper that was due tomorrow critiqued quite so harshly. She also had very specific questions about citation so the tutor printed her out pages to help her with that and she also gave her examples of how to cite when paraphrasing. The tutor allowed me to join in on the session and the student and I got on very well. I was able to offer some helpful ideas that she really seemed to like and felt like a bigger part of the writing center. With ten minutes to go the tutor said that I could finish off the session while she printed out the papers the girl had requested. I pointed out some final suggestions for her paper and help her rearrange a few sentences that we all had agreed belonged in a different place. It was a really helpful final observation.