Re: Extra-curricular consulting

[Devon Ray Fisher <dfisher3@utk.edu>]

I'm new to wcenter, so if what I have to say has been said previously,
my sincere apologies.

Reading through the ideas on extra-curricular consulting, I've noticed
that they seem to be primarily from the perspective of instructors/heads
of writing centers.  However, as a tutor, I have a somewhat different
point of view.  In my experience, tutors are people who intend to make a
career of teaching.  As such, they usually enjoy helping people with
their writing--paid or not.  For some of the students with whom I have
worked, working outside the writing center has the advantage of removing
the stigma that is, despite our best efforts, attached to a writing
center.  The other advantage that I see is that working outside my paid
hours allows me to give time to students as they need it; I do not feel
the pressure to finish working with a student because there are three
others waiting for help.  Obviously, this should be done in a public
place--the library has always been my place of choice.  By the same
token, now that I am tutoring at a relatively large state university, I
will limit my tutoring to the writing center purely due to reasons of
time.  I have had to learn when to say no, but as I'm sure many of you
will agree, this is a valuable skill that will serve me throughout my
career as a teacher.  Thus, I feel that at small colleges in particular,
working outside of the writing center does have its benefits and should
be left to the discretion of the tutor.

Devon Fisher
Dept. of English
University of Tennessee, Knoxville