A Whole New Semi-Hybrid Animal

This might be my last post as a “new tutor.”  I am returning to the writing center without the cap on hours or the training or the timidness with everything being so new.  Or so I thought…

I nearly forgot about that last quarter there was never a time for me to complete an online shadowing or tutorial.  Well, last week I was emailed by the center about a solution to that problem.  I was being assigned a time with a tutor who had created an actual appointment so I could learn to use the system.  Needless to say I was a bit anxious about it after hearing how many online tutorials result in a lot of trouble-shooting and little editing.

So shortly after returning to the center after a spring break hiatus, I went in to the online/IM appointment.  Logging on was easy enough and Melanie quickly uploaded an old paper she worked on last quarter.  From there we went through the synchronized swimming routine that is editing and sharing and click buttons and highlighting and entering text into the box.

Slowly, but surely we went through and got to some discussion about the thesis and conclusion of the paper.  As was expected, I pressed a wrong button and froze the screen and had to log out of the “classroom”  and then re-enter.  The nifty thing was that the program running the chat had saved the changes we were making to the document.

Overall it was pretty successful and though I am still not the most experienced person in the realm of online appointments (which seem to be a cross between face-to-face and feedback by email, except not really at all and more its own thing) I feel like I can move on and accept a few of my own online appointments in the future.

*also I lied above, I will blog yet again as a new tutor about my experiences next week as I venture in to the Richardson library outpost!