Tutoring Update

This week in tutoring was challenging, because once again, my students came to session without the assignments or material that they really wanted to work on most. One of them was limited by not having observed a class (a prerequisite for beginning the brainstorming/writing portion) after negative encounters or non-responsiveness with professors in the field she is hoping to study. Since we could not yet brainstorm for that assignment, we looked at a few short writings she had received back from her instructor. We took the one that she judged to need the most help, and we did a similar exercise like the one last week (when we both revised the same paper and compared our notes after). I read through the article the paper was supposed to summarize while she went through it and revised her work. One thing I am running up against is her not revising or proofreading before she turns in an assignment, which I reminded her again this week would be tremendously helpful. Her attitude this week was also less positive and less enthusiastic than normal, which (as we have discussed) could be for a multitude of reasons, but it is difficult to keep students motivated with exercises they might perceive as busy-work or when what we are doing is not exhibiting (in their opinion, and through neither of our faults) the best use of their time.