Journal #9

No fancy title this time. Sorry. Maybe next week.
A couple of weeks ago, before I was officially on the schedule, an English 90 student came in to the Center. I took him as a walk-in for some practice. I asked him what the assignment was about, and his reply was, "I don't know, some essay about me."
"So it's a personal essay," I reply.
"Yeah, I guess. Here." He hands me two freshly printed sheets of paper. "This is all I've got. It's supposed to be five pages."
I raise an eyebrow. "When is it due?" I ask.
"Today," he says. "Well, like 20 minutes." I groan inwardly.
"So...what did you want to work on?"
"Well," he says. "As it's due pretty soon here, I guess you can't mark on it. But, I don't know, I suck at writing."
I ask him if I can read it out loud, and he acquiesces. The grammar is jumbled, the word choice is poor, the sentence structure is luckluster...I'm at a loss as to what to tell this kid. As the session progresses, I'm getting more and more frustrated. Why wasn't he more prepared? What the heck am I supposed to do with this unmarkable paper? I scribble notes furiously on a writing pad.
"OK, you see here, how you used the word 'but' three times in the same sentence?" I ask. He nods. "Yeah, probably not a good idea. You could try breaking it up, if you wanted."
He leans forward. "Yeah, I can see that that's a big problem. I've been living in South America for the past five years, and I'm used to saying pero every couple of words, or so. Getting back in the swing of English has been a little difficult." A bell goes off in my head, and my frustration subsides. I can't be mad at a fellow globe trotter. How could I fault the poor guy for not using English in the past five years? I'd love to get inside this guy's head and see where he's been and what he's experienced, but time is running short.
"All right," I finally say. "As it's due now, I can't really change anything, obviously. May I suggest that next time you try to come in a little earlier? Then we could really straighten things out."
He nods sheepishly. "Well," he says. "This is just the first draft." I breathe a small sigh of relief. "But I'll definitely be back," he adds, waving a page full of notes at me. "Thanks so much for your help, I'm really grateful for it." I'm touched by this small show of appreciation. The rewards, admittedly, do not come often, but when they come, they're worth the wait.
One of the main reasons I applied to the Writing Center, as stated in an earlier post, was to help ESL students. Another HUGE reason I decided to apply, and one which made sure to tell Mike Mattison over and over again in my interview, was that I was interested in helping people. I remember telling him that I felt it was my duty to help one other person in one major way in my lifetime. Now, I don't know if I'll help someone in a major way through the Writing Center (I was thinking more along the lines of donating one of my kidneys to some sick kid in a third world country), but I still feel like I'm accomplishing something big here.
Speaking of Mike, did anyone see Phil's costume, today? I admit, I lol'd.