My Own Two Feet

My first consultation was an interesting experience. I wasn’t shadowing a veteran consultant, I wasn’t consulting a fake paper, and the paper wasn’t written by a student who graduated a decade ago. For the first time, I was entirely on my own and had to immediately adjust to the fluid dynamic of the consultation. While frightening, the consultation proved to be a valuable lesson that forced me to extract knowledge from myself and apply it as best as possible.

I was surprised when I realized that one of the first decisions I had to make was where to take the student. I would normally not have thought about it too hard, except I wanted to ensure that whatever location we went to would foster the type of positive consultation I sought. It is important to be seated in a way that allows for your body language to convey yourself as an ally and not an authoritative figure (Ryan and Zimmerelli 18).

Once we settled into a computer lab with both of us sitting next to each other, I asked for the assignment sheet again. I placed it in front of us, and went through the assignment’s key words to ensure that we had a mutual understanding about the direction her paper needed to take. By clarifying the scope of the paper through an examination of the prompt, we focused the paper in a way that will make the professor happier and the student’s job easier (Kendall 1). This particular prompt required knowledge of two short stories that the writer had attached for me to read. Thankfully I took the time to read both of them, because otherwise I know that my commentary would not have been very helpful. A lot of my suggestions were in response to particular points in the story, and so I felt rewarded for putting in the extra time. I realized that in the future I really ought to continue that habit both for the student’s benefit and to boost my own confidence in the subject material so that I’m more comfortable during the session.

After we finished with the assignment sheet, I took out the student’s paper. I wrote my commentary restrictively but purposefully, and I figured that if the consultation would be most effective if I stuck to my points of commentary, and her thesis, and then ask if there was anything else she wanted to talk about. Luckily, it was a good paper, which made restrictive commentary much easier for red-pen happy hand. At first I felt awkward moving through the areas of concern, I felt like I was preaching and she was just listening and I couldn’t be sure if she agreed, disagreed, or was even processing what I was saying. By the third point, I made sure that after I went over an area of concern I specifically asked her for her thoughts. Once I started doing that, the student openly discussed where she agreed with me, where she didn’t, and in either case what her reasoning was for doing whatever she did. This made the session so much more productive and she was able to understand more clearly what I was saying while I could put myself into her perspective more.

At this time, the issue became how much do I assert my initial perspective onto her? Once she began explaining her points of view on her writing, I wanted to let her maintain control of her paper, but I genuinely believe that she would benefit from taking my advice more seriously. As Shamoon and Burns note in “A Critique of Pure Tutoring”, many students in writing across-the-curriculum programs actually find directive tutoring sessions to be more helpful and increase their potential as writers (174). In this case, however, I trusted the student’s abilities as a writer enough where I felt comfortable having her process my feedback and maintain more control over what revisions she’ll make. I didn’t have to mull over how minimalistic to be, because the limited number of concerns made it so that I didn’t have to choose which ones took priority.

The last shift in my consultation approach took place as I realized that the pattern of dialogue was not as fruitful as it could be. I would explain my perspective, the writer would explain hers, and we would share a kind of mutual nod, and then move on to the next point. Clearly, this wasn’t giving the student as much control of the consultation as I wanted to. For my last few areas of concern, I would just point to the page, have her review what I wrote, and then wait for her response to it without me framing the question first. Her responses became much more clear and she would even go so far as to ask me questions instead of vice versa, which was refreshing for a nervous tutor. It showed that she was really vested into the session, appreciated my points, and was willing to engage them.

I actually got the idea from when I was consulted by a different tutor. I noticed that I started doing a lot of the talking when my tutor just pointed and looked up, and so incorporated that technique into my consultation strategy. When I was consulted, I also noticed how responsive I was to the tutor’s tone, word choice, and body language. This made me much more careful in how I presented myself to my tutee (to a borderline paranoid level) but I definitely noticed that I was able to evoke more involved responses from her that required higher level thinking and reflection.

Afterwards I asked if she had any other questions that I had not addressed. She replied that she didn’t, that I had gone over everything she was thinking over and then some. As we were walking out of the room, as friends, I nervously whispered, “Was that helpful? Do you think that went okay?” She smiled and responded, “Absolutely. You’re a natural.” I feel much better having gotten positive feedback from my first consultation on my own, but hope that I can learn from this experience to improve myself when dealing with students submitting papers that are less fluid than this one.