Jacqueline Cavazos
English 12D

I remember when I first started working in the Writing Center, it was important that we called ourselves a “Writing Assistant” and not a “tutor” or “editor.”  Since then, I probably call myself a tutor more than a writing assistant. I think that this is because people often recognize the word “tutor” more than they do a “writing assistant.” When friends and family would ask me what I do for work, telling them that I was a tutor made more sense to them. In this article that I found called, Defining Ourselves: Do we really want to use the Word Tutor? By Lex Runciman, the word “tutor” is analyzed in the writing center. The author makes the claim that using the word tutor isn’t effective in the Writing Center, as we are peers among the students. She states that the employees of a writing center are much more than just a tutor. However, using the word tutor isn’t taboo either, because we are tutors. I found this article to be interesting, but the author isn’t really effective in getting her point across. I feel that as writing assistants we are also writing tutors as well.

http://casebuilder.rhet.ualr.edu/wcrp/publications/wcj/wcj11.1/WCJ11.1_runciman.pdf