At first, I think my eyebrows shot up. I was offended -- of course I still worked at the Writing Center -- I was there every day! But, then I realized what she was asking. She was asking whether I still tutored at the writing center. I laughed, explaining my rather minimal tutoring hours, on Monday nights and Wednesday mornings. My internship consumed the rest of my time spent there, and often meant I was sitting at my computer in the corner, working on studio group reminders for our facilitators, or trying to piece together a video for our media outreach plan.
---
After a few days, Kaity's comment still bothered me. I wasn't offended, or upset, but more just concerned with what my identity was at the writing center was now that I wasn't primarily acting as a peer tutor.
In my mind, my primary role at the writing center is still that of a peer tutor. Regardless of what I am doing -- whether it is a one-on-one tutoring appointment, facilitating a studio writing group, making a YouTube video, laughing with a writer in the hallway outside of our center, or making more coffee (sometimes I feel that is my primary task at the writing center...) -- I still consider myself a peer tutor. All of these different roles function for the purpose of improving my understanding of what it means to be a tutor. To me, this idea was plain as day, but to others, the definition of a peer tutor was very different.
Just this week, a group of tutors met at to discuss brainstorming ideas for conference proposals to present at the National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing. The prompt for this year's conference is (De)Center: Testing Assumptions about Peer Tutoring and Writing Centers. As a group, we tossed around ideas of what it meant to (de)center ourself as a writing center, but, I quickly began to situate myself in the understanding of (de)centering my role as a peer tutor.
In the last year, my roles at the writing center have changed drastically. My beginnings as a peer tutor were unique in that I began one-on-one tutoring at the same time that I began facilitating writing/studio groups. I started at the MSU Writing Center understanding these two roles to be somewhat synonymous. During my first semester, I also was thrown on board the newsletter train, learning what it was to view our writing center from an outside perspective. My second semester only exploded from there. I was a peer tutor, a facilitator, a newsletter organizer, a video maker, and resident flyer-maker extraordinaire. In October, I traveled with two other peer tutors and our administrators to Orlando for the IWCA/NCPTW and began to understand myself as a hopeful writing center scholar.
During all of this -- I was still a peer tutor.
This semester, my tutoring hours are limited. I am facilitating six different studio groups from classes across campus. I am filming interviews, making videos, building our YouTube presence, scheduling studios, reminding facilitators, listening to tutors' successes and struggles, and still (perpetually) making more coffee. My roles have grown to include more jobs, tasks, and talents than I thought I would ever employ at the writing center, but I still consider myself a peer tutor.
It seems to me that we, as a writing center community, need to (de)center ourselves in our definition of peer tutoring. I am lucky in my position to have a Director and Assistant Director who trust and encourage me to undertake new challenges and ideas. I am lucky to be situated in a community of tutors who listen and are constantly spouting new ideas. I am incredibly grateful for this internship opportunity to learn what it means to work in writing center administration.
But, I am still a peer tutor.
