Good Sessions

The vast majority of the time I get pretty terrible sessions. On one side, I usually get ESL students who have a difficult time communicating with me verbally, and generally only want help with surface level issues. These surface level issues are fixable, but the reasons for that are difficult to explain to someone who speaks the language, let alone someone who is learning it. Though I help their papers I don't feel as though I've helped them much when I explain changes to them and ask "do you understand?" or "do you see what I mean?" and they just nod and smile or say "yes, mmhmm" clearly not understanding me. Otherwise I get students who have no interest at all in writing and come in saying they need to write a paper, "what do you need help with?" I ask. "Uhhh" is all I get in return.

I don't think we talk enough about the really good sessions. I generally don't get these often. When I do, it is one good session out of 4 for my day of work that day, but honestly it makes the whole day worth it. Generally they have a relatively disorganized paper, because all they've done is just write and let it flow without concerning themselves with structure. It is enjoyable to work with them because they have all of their ideas clearly presented, they just need help making sense of it. The most reason one just needed help coming up with a thesis, which was great because he was already making an argument with his paper, he just didn't quite know what. Being an enormous help to someone like that makes the depressing sessions worth it.