The past lesson with Shanshan went kind of roughly. After going over one of her previous essays I told her we were going to try to go through the organizing stage together. It was difficult to do as the prompt was a more tricky than some of the others. We had trouble narrowing our argument down to a few simple points that would fit an essay structure we were trying out. I stayed a half hour afterwords.
As I said before, we were focusing on not simply copying the wording of the essay prompt but try to paraphrase the information or use it as a launching point to make a new point. From some reason I found my ability to do this was hampered somehow. Maybe I'm still figuring out how to fit into the tutor role? Maybe I'm putting too much pressure on myself to have the answers instead of relaxing and helping her out the best I can?
In the end, the lesson didn't go the way I'd visualized, but after Shanshan expressed extreme thankfulness. She then asked me if I was getting paid to help her. When I told her I was volunteering she said that she was interested in doing the same so as to help someone else out as I was helping her. I was really flattered and made some comment about how I guessed that's how these kinds of things work. You help someone out and they are filled with the desire to pass on the kindness... Kind of like one of those corny commercials where one person starts a chain of good deeds. Things don't work quite that way in reality, and my motivations for tutoring are admittedly not altruistic, but it still felt good to hear this. In the office upstairs Karen told Shanshan that there were some lessons she could translate for Chinese ESL students.
This feeling is all explained in-depth here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=futxIzHLcuM&feature=related
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