New Job Tutoring

I’ve taken a job as a tutor at Johnson County Community College, and it’s been an eye-opening experience. The writing center is full of unique minds. There’s an Australian chap who wears his bluntness like a top hat, a student journalist, an actress-author-musician, and a Costa Rican guy who’s brains literally bulge out of his head. The slew of other tutors deserves mention, but I don’t work the same hours as they do. They’ve one thing in common—that they impressed our boss well enough to land the job.

And that’s all we have in common. Every single tutor there takes a completely different approach to tutoring (and to writing in general.) They were, at one point, listing off activities they do when writing. I was gazing into an alien universe. None of them write how I write; none of them even start writing the way I write. And to avoid being ego-centric, I’ll go on a limb and say that none of them write like each other.

This job has really opened my eyes. We’re all different and we’re all allowed to be different. It’s refreshing.

I taught an Ethiopian man (who is just beginning to study English) a mnemonic for spelling Christian, and I’m exceptionally proud to have thought of it. I told him to always start with C-H-R-I-S-T and then add an I-A-N, because Christ is in every Christian. It makes a bit more sense out loud, I think.

School shooting forewarned, JCCC

Some odd weeks ago, one of the ASL professors discovered a piece of bathroom graffiti that read, "I will shoot the school in May."

School security has more or less been going nuts--I always see them running somewhere, lately. And who can blame them? If you throw a stone at a hornet nest, it inevitably results in angry hornets. And that ruins everything for anyone in the area.

Today, I found "MAY 15" scrawled into a bathroom stall in the JCCC library. The school gestapo came after I reported it and collected all of my personal info. I have nothing to hide and no real reluctance about answering questions such as, "Where do you live?" and "what is your phone number?" -- but I can't help feel like they had no real reason to ask me about that and not bother to ask me questions relevant to the issue. Unless of course my reporting the graffiti automatically makes me a suspect. And if this is the case, why would I ever call something like this to their attention again?

The librarian theorized that some highschooler was trying to get out of a Thursday final. It makes sense, but I can't help but be wary, given the recent number of school shootings.

If someone pulls a gun at my school, they'd better kill me on the first shot.

And believe you me, if I find the little prick writing this crap in the bathrooms, he'd better hope I don't catch up to him in a cold, dark alley. I'll break his little fingers.

The school is installing cameras over all of the bathroom doors. No word yet as to whether these are fake or not (a number of fake cameras sit in the parking garage as an attempt to deter pranksters and thieves) -- but it creates another problem altogether, in my opinion. Do we really want to attend a school where there is a solid record of our every biological function?

I wonder if some over-shy girl won't explode her bladder trying to wait for the nice, private bathroom in her home.