Week Four, Student Athlete

This past Thursday, I had my first ever conference with a student athlete. And guess what: nothing was different. Meeting with student athletes (so far as my experience reaches) is the same as working with students who are not athletes. The student came in with some strong ideas that she needed help communicating with the reader. I saw this as the same type of struggles as most other students who come into the writing center.

We sat down this week to two writing assignments: a 200 word reflection about a concert for a music class, and a two page paper demonstrating that the student had observed a sociological principle through her own experience.

The reflection clearly got accross the student's feeling about the concert: she thought it was frighteningly pretentious. Being from Trinidad herself, and experiencing a concert that was supposed to represent the Christmas season in a Caribbean environment, she had strong feelings about the concert and felt restricted by the length of the paper. Since the reflection communicated her major dissappointments with the concert, we worked on condensing statements so she could say more, and comma placement, a common pattern of error that the tutor regularly notices in the student's work.

The second piece of writing needed a bit more work. The student wrote about the behavior of students in a study hall with and without an authority figure present. She obviously had understanding of the topic and the principle she was trying to demonstrate, but this time had trouble communicating exactly what she was trying to say. She had written a strong thesis that was easily identifyable, but her topic sentences needed work connecting back to that thesis. We asked the student what the main ideas of each paragraph were and how they related back to her thesis, and then explained that she should open each paragraph with a statment that summarizes exactly that. She picked up on the idea quickly and developed much stronger topic sentences without much guidance.

When it comes to working with student athletes, tutors must take an individual approach to each student. No one fits any stereotype exactly, and it is imperative not to judge a student before they walk into the center. Every athlete on this campus is here for more than just athletics. It is a strong university that opens up more opportunities for athletes than other Division I schools around the nation. When it comes to helping these students write, it is essential not to group them or stereotype them in any way. Doing so will only lead to frustration and anxiety on both the student's and the tutor's behalf.