oh the agony

barely twenty minutes and the session was over. should i have been more prepared?

i believe i was more prepared to tutor J than before because well first i recieved the paper beforehand, and also the midterm and nietzche paper we had to grade and review was helpful in this real live situation. I even left a comment at the end of his paper learning from the last midterm. i initially did this so i could let him know i enjoyed his paper. ( a bit of encouragment is always helpful). But after the session, i discovered another important aspect of leaving a comment: the truth of it is that sometimes the tutor does not remember to explain everything she wanted to and the comment is a way for the writer to find the comment. for example, in his paper, J seemed to include a lot of the same reasons in all of his paragraphs. i mentioned briefly and generally that the paragraphs should be soley supporting the paragraphs. i think in my mind, i didn't want to sound repetitive and say the same thing again, but i thought that brief explanation was not enough. however, i did include what i wanted to say in the comment which makes me more at ease.

i feel like twenty minutes was not enough time for his paper; i don't think its hard to get a lot corrected but the important thing should not be what i correct but what he understands about the corrections. i feel like i didn't have the right words to convey how to better organize the paper and i kept running into flashing red lights telling me i needed to let him figure out the answer and his own thoughts. ive been learning how i shouldn't be directive but it is really hard not to be. wording the right words is harder than i thought.

nowadays i feel like it is wrong to point out grammar mistakes and that it is better not to and i try to get over them as quickly as possible. i think we've been told repeatedly how the point of the writing center is for students to get their papers proofread and edited, that it seems wrong to do any editing at all!
--edit--
so that was a bit of the good part of the session. but then again there was a part where i didn't know how to let the writer know how to organize his paper. in the paper, he had one paragraph that talked about the negative aspects of his advertisment and it did not seem to be in the right place but i had no idea where it should go. I thought and thought but i did not have the 'right' answer at the moment. what should I have done? was there something I could have done before the tutor session that would have prepared me more for this moment?