What Am I Doing Here? by Jessie

What Am I Doing Here? by Jessie - July 2016 Scholarship Essay

After taking several years off from school to work in minimum wage jobs, I began my first full-time semester at a community college in the fall of 2013. One of my classes was English 1, the basic, entry-level composition class in California. The first day of class, I sat in the front of the room, as I had been advised in orientation, but I wanted to hide in the back corner. What am I doing here? Shouldn’t someone else be in this spot? My professor expressed that she was impressed with my writing early on in the semester, but I was convinced that she was seeing something that wasn't there. I was attending school with the intention of completing some sort of vocational program to find some kind of job – any kind of job – that would give my son a better life.

That semester, I started to become more invested in my education and my writing. I studied more than I ever had in high school and put in more effort than I had in any job I'd ever held. Everything that I was learning resonated with me in a way that it never had before; I began to crave more knowledge, more things to critically analyze and develop an opinion about. The essays I turned in that semester became stronger and easier to write. By the end of the semester, I had earned an A in my English class, and my professor wanted to refer me to be a tutor at the writing center on campus, as she insisted that she was confident that I would do well.

I was taken off-guard by the idea that I, the student who had just stopped going to school her senior year because she was bored, who had become pregnant before she had even figured out what she wanted to do with her life, could qualify for a position tutoring others. Weren't tutors usually the young, straight A, middle-class students who went off to a four-year university right after they graduated with honors? At first, I turned down the job prospect, but I began to feel regret. What if this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I would think about in retrospect, while working a job that I didn't enjoy, and wonder what doors would have been opened if I had just given it a try?

With a great deal of doubt, I turned in the application with my instructor referral and a sample of my writing. A few weeks later, I received an email congratulating me on being accepted as a tutor. I was in shock. Surely, this must be a mistake. When I got to the first employee meeting, would the director send me home because they meant to invite someone that wasn't' so... me? My boss gave me a work schedule instead. Would they see through the façade of my instructor referral and know that I didn't really belong working as an English tutor as soon as I had my first session with a student?

But none of that happened. Sure, tutoring students was a little rough at first. The conversations were awkward, and I stressed about what I would have the students do. Every day, I came to work with the intention and dedication to help others with something I have struggled with myself. Students began to tell me that they felt more confident about what they were working on. They became more invested in their own writing, arriving to sessions prepared to take their own notes. Some students returned time and time again and showed me drastic changes in their study habits, writing strategies, and the work that they were able to generate.

After a few semesters, I was offered a position working as an embedded tutor in a classroom, a position that provided me more responsibility and learning experiences. Many of the students in the class had the same attitude that I had when I first returned to school. They didn't want to share their writing with anyone else, especially me, the tutor that they assumed knew everything, and they believed that they were destined to be terrible writers for the rest of their lives. Over time, I was able to get to know them and let them know that I was a human being that had the same insecurities and worries as them when I first set out writing at a college level. I became their confidant – someone they would share things with that were too embarrassing to them to tell the teacher, someone who would understand when they discussed their obstacles to me, someone who would tell them that they could master things that were difficult to them if they persevered. Success became more tangible to them just as it did for me when my English professor took the time to believe in me.

The most important lesson that I've ever learned from a teacher is that I was wrong – anyone can be a successful student in college if they set their mind to it. Instead of avoiding things that challenge me, I now embrace them as opportunities to grow and change as a person. Instead of asking myself what am I doing here, my question is what can I do here. I hope that, through tutoring, I am able to pass this message along to others as well.