Text vs Writing

Sigh. Not to be the stereotypical anti-tutor, but it seems like we've already had the same arguments about writers vs. texts, and I'm pretty sure the jury is still out on that one (is that a colloquialism?). Thats because there is no right judgement, only a right tutee and a right time, as Ortoleva states. I don't think he did an awful job of 'meditiating' on this movement from text to writer or vice versa, nor do I have any complaints about how he writes. I liked how he observed that when a tutor works with a student from a completely different discipline, they are almost forced to focus more on the writer, since they can't really understand the writing.
Personally, I've had an experience with sucha student; he was a biology major, and I'm..not. His paper was about some kind of germ that is found in the roots of some kind of species of goldenrod and radish. Totally bizzarre, and I only understood every other word int he paper. On top of all the confusion about WHAT the paper was about, the structure of the paper was different! Who knew the other departments wrote differently?? Apparently this paper was written in a 'lab' format, where only scientific material and fact could be presented. No opinion, no flowery words, no metaphor..what the heck? This wasn't writing! It was robotic regurgitation of boring ideas, right? Not so much. after 15 minutes of having the writer explain to me what it was we were doing, and how I could help him, I was ready to let him be the tutor. We finally came to an understandign, and the rest of the session went fairly smoothly. Turns out he really only needed emotional support. Anyways, we ended up focusing more on him and his interpretation and how he presented the facts rather than the paper itsself, and so that's how I had my first text-centered tutoring session.