My first tutoring experience

     When my professor first said the class will be tutoring ENG 099 students, I was a little nervous and anxious at the same time. Tutoring is still something so new to me that I didn't know how I would do or what the outcome would be. I felt like I was going to do horrible job at tutoring and that the student will know that I have no idea what I was doing. At first, I was so worried that I was not going to do an adequate job and that I was totally going to mess up this poor student's paper. 
     The day came when we were going to meet our tutee's and tutor them one-on-one. So I called my tutee's name aloud and she smiled when she heard it. I figured this should be a positive and exciting experience, for both, the tutee and myself. We sat down and I began by telling her to read aloud her entire paper to time and then the second time we went paragraph by paragraph. As she read aloud her paper, for a while I hadn't noticed any grammatical or spelling errors. Her introduction was well constructed and incorporated that article given to her by the professor. The article was about how ads, on subways and streets, send negative connotations to the wrong audiences and influence the younger generations into doing things that are not acceptable at their ages. 
     I understand that LOCs should not be a major issue which tutoring but I felt, being a perfectionist, that the tutee deserves to understand all the problem areas in her paper. I corrected about two misspelled words which were almost close to the actual spelling and asked the tutee what she meant or wanted to say in a sentence that didn't really make sense to me. She responded by asking my feedback and I told her if she wanted to correct it then that would be fine. The only critique I had for her introduction so was that she didn't make it clear for the readers what her thesis or argument was. Since the beginning of her second paragraph clearly stated an argumental point, I suggested to the tutee that she incorporate that argue to construct her thesis statement. She thought that was a good tip and used that advice to work on her thesis in her paper. 
     We went on to her second paragraph, which was her only body paragraph in her paper. There she had an excellent first sentence to begin her body paragraph and stood with that same topic throughout her paragraph. 
     Her next and final paragraph was her conclusion. She was honest to me and told me that she doesn't really understand what a conclusion entails. I told what it was and we began read it together. She had a good conclusion but she attempted to quote the author but in confusing way. She had one idea before the quote and the quote didn't coincide with the previous sentence that she wrote. It was basically two different ideas but I told her if I want to quote the author, you must make it clear in your paragraph. I told her that she didn't include her personal connection anywhere in her paper 
     Her overall paper was well executed and followed the guidelines closely to what is expected of them in the CAT-W exam. The only crucial mistakes she made was that she didn't have a clear and strong thesis and also that she didn't include the personal connection portion. I tried to help the tutee as much as I could and I even showed her my own CATW exam and some examples that was given to us by my professor. 
     At times, there was awkward silence between the both of us but we broke that silence and began discussing  our school experiences. I enjoyed my first tutoring experience with my tutee and look forward to the other two meetings we have. I'm glad to say that actually tutoring released any anxiety I had previously had and how non tormenting is was.