Free to Be You and Me?

I'm glad that we're finally discussing reality in the writing room, and by that I mean: a situation we might actually run into when tutoring, unlike the other theories we've been reading. I mean no offense by this, I'm just excited to be discussing a controversial topic.
I do think that its better for the tutors to act as mild censors, becasue we can interact with the clients on a student-peer level. We have no more power than they do, but at the same time we are supposed to be representatives of the university, and are backed up by our training. To me, it seems like the student would be more inclined to pay attention to what we have to say rather than a professor, or the students in the classroom because there's always the suspicion that your peers in the classroom are just performing for the professor's approval. This way, its just one-on-one with you and the client, and I think this is the best possible environment for this sort of confrontation. I think the only 'censoring' duty that we have is to present the client with options: he/she can either develop a better defense of their opinion, or they can be told that their opinion may be met with a less-than-enthusiastic response, and either way their freedom of expression isn't being infringed upon.

Not So Much

Maybe its because it's already been drilled into our heads that one of the main purposes of tutoring is teamwork and idea exchange, or maybe its because I assume to understand too much, but either way, my first reaction to Lunsford's essay was "Well, duh!" There was no other word fo rthe feeling that she was just filling up a few pages with a discovery that I had already made on the first day of class. Maybe I'm missing her point, but I feel like we as students-soon-to-be-tutors are already aware that collaboration is a necessity in the writing center. How can you help a client without the exchange of ideas or the validation of their ability to communicate? It takes two contributing people making an exchange, or having a discussion, and to me, that best defines collaboration. How can we tutor any other way? It seems that one of the afore-mentioned ideas drilled into our heads, the client-tutor realtionship, is the one we have focused on the most so far, and Lunsford's "Center as a Storeroom" or "as Garret" is what we have been advised against doing the entire time. Her Storeroom and Garret are good examples of the tutor as Dictator in the writing room hierarchy, while I think that collaboration promotes a kind of equality. Lunsford begins to claify all this towards the end of her essay, but I still feel like I'm missing a central idea. I'm confused by her simultaneous advocation for, and warning against collaboration. The piece is written more like a speech than an essay, I think.
On a completely un-related, petty-me note, I think Lunsford is full of herself and needs to tone down the unnecessary self-promotion in order to better get her point across without causing the animosity of the reader (like me).

I am starting to believe that the purpose of this book is to confuse us, and its working on me. I know I should stop looking at the book as a guide, but its habit. After having just been lectured to avoid being too authorative, too 'powerful' in the writing room, now we have Brooks teling us that we should basically become another teacher. Develop the studen't writing thoughts and ideas, don't worry aobut the grammar. But this totally contradicts his example at the start of the essay in which everyone comes away happy and satisfied. If the PROFESSOR gave the student a good grade, then it was obviously up to their standard of writing, and who are we to change that? I am starting to sound like the anti-tutor, I think. Something isn't right here.

Tutor/Psychoanalyist

The tutor as a psychoanalyst? I think that there is too much importance being placed on the tutor in this reading. I understand how the connection can be made between psychoanalyst and tutor, but I can't see how they are so comparable on such a large scale. Sure, students or "clients" are vulnerable when dealing with their writing, and in that case yes, the tutor psychoanalyses. but to me, the reality of the writing room is that the people who most often use it are those who aren't aren't too concerned with their writing as emotioinal expression. I don't mean to insinuate that the writing room is only used by remedial students, or by those who suck at writing, but I am saying that I don't think tutors need to be so concerned with the 'delicate writers' psyche'. Its hard for me to imagine a student as "hurt" as Murphy describes coming into USI's writing room looking for a non-judgemental tutor to nurture their writing. I can see semi-pychoanalyzing a student's work to help them clarify what they're trying to get across, but most of this essay sounds like the tutor is babying the client. Is it just me?