Day Five

Got back from my first class meeting. Rocky at the beginning (I floundered a lot) but it got much more productive once we got past the Girl/My Name stuff only because I don’t think she was very into the exercise? I could see the comprehension dawning in Tutee X’s eyes. Huh. Didn’t know it would feel that…fulfilling, I guess, to help someone understand a concept.

This is truly a “Choose your own adventure” sort of class. I feel like we made progress.

We went over that exercise first. Then did a really, really extensive reading of “Birthday Party.” She did most of the analysis while I tried to guide a little. She was quite good at it, better than I think her writing would indicate. Perhaps instead of her outlines, I can encourage her to making more annotations on the actual text. Perhaps then it might be easier for her to see threads and commonalities and things. Then, we read “Indian Camp” by Hemingway, talked about it a little, paying attention to dialogue, things you can learn about a character and how they can change throughout the story, pinpointing where that happens, looking at how a seemingly simple story has depth to it.

Next week:

• examples of strong essays
• words to describe tone, possibly other writerly words commonly used in analysis just to get a better/more sophisticated vocabulary
• maybe bring in some more short passages, get her attuned to looking at details, picking them out to support an argument

Day One

Taking liberties with the word ‘log’ by adding a ‘b’ in front of it. Because, God knows, if I’m left to write something on my computer, it’ll be saved on my desktop and then shuffled into an Inception-like folder of folders of other folders so, here, where I won’t lose it: (b)log!

I met with my 126 tutee today after a bit of a kerfuffle yesterday at Starbucks. (Note to self: buy coffee from Roche Bros.) Turns out we both live in Freeman and are both from Illinwaa, albeit from different parts. I could swear that I had a whole speech/introduction planned, but it’s like I see people and my mind focuses solely on the fact that I’m having a human interaction, not that anything of substance needs to happen during it.

What I gathered from this meeting is that tutee X likes current events and neuroscience, together, preferably. She’s also amenable to writing a paper about a story about current events or based on current events.  I don’t know of any stories like that. Maybe the New Yorker will have something? IDK.

Things to Work On:

• X should stop making those elaborate detailed outlines–sounds like trying to start a paper without actually starting a paper
• What’s wrong with passive voice? Unless it’s every single line. Doesn’t Word correct stuff like that? Maybe get her to read some varied essays or something
• Develop style of writing–big task, don’t think I can do this, maybe just give her lots of examples, lots of free writing, no more outlines
• Thesis statements–she apparently tries to do too much in them, perhaps this is a bit of perfectionism peeking out, IDK
• Try to get X to have fun with writing, seems like she thinks this is a little ‘means to an end’-like