With this week and the past few being so crazy with finals, papers, and all that jazz I thought everyone could use some positivity. This past Friday I had what I feel was probably my best tutoring session to date and felt so incredibly proud that I just wanted to share with everyone!
I saw the woman's name and her short little blurb of what she wanted to work on, all it said was "Doctorate lecture." Immediately, I began to get nervous. I'm a senior but still, I'm an undergrad. How could I possibly help this poor woman with her doctorate lecture? What even was that? She showed up early to her appointment and told me right away she was from Russia and English was her second language. Talk about another *gulp* moment for me! In perfect English however, she described to me exactly what her doctoral lecture was and basically she was giving a little speech/presentation before she would play the violin for the doctorate panel. Right off the bat she said she needed help with pronunciation of some of the words and knew some sentences were off but she was not sure how to fix them/make them sound more natural. Luckily it was an hour appointment, so she read the speech out loud for me and we stopped when there were problems. A lot of the time when I stopped her, she pointed out exactly what was wrong before I even had to ask if she thought what sounded strange. I tried to not be too directive and only had to be a handful of times when she just couldn't find the correct work/thought. Since she was my last appointment of the day (my next class had been cancelled), I offered to stay an extra 5 minutes since we were literally on her conclusion when time ran out.
As we were wrapping up and I asked her for any last minute concerns, she began saying that I shouldn't have stayed later than I had to and trying to get me out of there but I told her I really wanted to help her finish. She actually teared up a bit as she was getting ready to leave. The lady shook my hand and thanked me a million times. At one point I said I hoped I had helped her out and she just gave me this smile, it made everything so worth it. She looked so happy, reassuring me that I had helped her so much and she did not feel so nervous and scared about her speech and how much less stress she felt now. I helped her book one final appointment for this coming week so she can practice it on someone else but the final thing that made me so happy was she requested me! Unfortunately, it wasn't in her schedule to get at my time again but just the fact she thought of me was amazing. Sorry this turned out incredibly long but it really just was such a special experience. I truly felt like everything we've worked so hard for this semester came to fruition!
So now I'd love for you guys to share your favorite/best experience in the RWC! I have a few others but limited myself to one for now :)
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