The Life of a Professional Tutor

I really love my job. It is so much fun, and I feel like it is extremely relevant. I don't like doing jobs in which I don't feel like I am helping others or benefiting someone else's life in some way. I don't see the point otherwise. Since I don't start the post-graduate certificate study for editing until January, I have been working full time and only working, and I'm really happy with it.

The department that I am in is wonderful. It's so well-organized and run by a team of really great people. There is very little office drama, and I feel like a well-respected, valued member of a very multi-cultural and accepting staff. Last year, there was a highly competitive, and...um...provocative tutor who I was friends with for a short time. She may have been academically intelligent, but that apparently didn't carry over into her everyday life. She was extremely jealous and vengeful. When she did not return to work, she, I assume, thought that I had something to do with it. Office drama insued, but the people who I work for backed me and I don't have to worry about her threats anymore. This year, I feel like we have a GREAT tutorial staff, and everyone is friends! I have gotten to be close friends with the geology tutor and another English tutor and am getting to know many others. We started a "tutoring club", and try to get together to watch the games when we can. Last weekend, we watched the UW vs. Oregon game so that Rachel, the geology tutor, could learn how football is played. She got free tickets to the game that will be disrupting the entire city on November 18th, and needed to know how football works, stat! I am planning on doing something similar for the Nov. 18th game, seeing as how it's my birthday, I have the day off because of traffic issues, and I won't be able to get anywhere in my car that day.

I hope everyone had a great Halloween, however long ago that was. I ended up having to give a review for one of my students' midterms. After that, I walked back to my apartment. I realized that I hadn't planned to do anything, this holiday has just snuck up on me. I ended up going over to Rachel, the geology tutor's, house and watching a movie, so that was pretty fun. I spent the last two Fridays leaving straight from work and driving to PA to go to the dentist. I have everything planned out perfectly. If I leave by 11:15, I make it to Edmonds in plenty of time to catch the 12:05 ferry, which gets me to the dentist at almost exactly 2:00. Yesterday, I had two cavities filled, so luckily I won't be going back next week. Last weekend, I stayed in PA overnight, then drove back to Seattle so that we could get together with the other tutors and watch the football game by 12:30. It was against Oregon, who is undefeated. We played really well, actually, but gave up the game in the 4th quarter. Leaving the sports bar, we hitched a ride down to Hec Ed Pavillion to watch the men's basketball exhibition game. Most of us had free tickets from work, so there was a little pack of tutors. I ended up getting my tickets later than the first group of tutors did, so we were sitting in different places. I ended up sitting practically courtside, while they were up in the rafters! Luckily, they were able to sneak in and sit next to me at halftime, in the ICA staff section. All day on Sunday morning, I had to prepare for my students' Drama 101 misterm review. I hadn't planned on teaching a midterm review session, but everyone seemed pretted overwhelmed when their teacher posted the review sheet on the class website and it was about 5 pages long. I had to read like crazy, then go to see the play Love's Labour's Lost that the students were supposed to watch and write a response to. I really enjoyed the play, it was SO good, but it was right in the middle of the afternoon and over 2 hours long. I had to walk straight from the theater to the other end of campus, where I work, finish preparing, and give the review. There was so much information that we ended up not getting all of the way through it, and the students all said that their midterm was overly difficult. I'm waiting to find out most of the scores, but it wasn't a very good test for anybody.

This weekend, I am volunteering as a writing tutor for the Dream Project, which helps kids from 15 high schools around the area fill out college applications and write letters of intent. It's especially helpful to underprivileged students and students who don't speak English as a first language. It's a great program and very well-organized. I felt like I made a difference today. Even though my brain is totally fried, I will be back to tutor all day tomorrow.