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Tutoring Again

One of my former tutoring students called me today for help with his "Radio, TV, and Film" class this fall. The class is titled "Perspectives on the Cinema," and it's not just American cinema. The class is a prerequisite for the core classes, and it seems to be a freshman weeder. You have to pass the class to get on in the program, and RTF is a widely sought degree in these parts. The professor got his PhD from UCLA, and speaks highly of his class and his requirements from students.

My student's name is David. He's a 30-something college student, working his way to a radio job someday, and he has a great voice for it. His last class was on the short story, and I loved to listen to him read. He has learning disabilities, but he is undaunted in his dreams. I greatly admire his tenacity.

I'll never make good money as a tutor, because I always feel too much for the position of the student. He's working weekends ast a video store, and he can't afford to pay me much. My last big payoff from him was that we bartered his textbook as my payment at the end of the semester. One can never have too many short story anthologies, to my way of thinking.

We talked for almost an hour this evening, and his worst fear is what his professor has said about plagerism. There's now a website called www.turnitin.com that has a fanastic databse and keen reputation for catching plagerism. I'm going to have to check it out. It's high time, I say. Too many people have gotten away with plagerism too often.

Generating original thoughts are what college is about. I'm only going to charge him $10-15 a session, and we're planning to meet once a week. On the open market, I ought to be worth $25.00 an hour--but that's academic stuff, not real world.

I'm looking forward to tutoring again. It's nice to work with someone who really wants to learn, and I know I'll end up learning more than I teach. I'm the grammar technician and the thought magnet for his undertaking. Tutoring is just guiding the dimly sighted. It's a skill I enjoy using, even if I can't set my rates to get ahead fiancially. I'll get karma, and that's far better.