I interviewed Andrew Canino in person at the Reading and Writing Center on July 11, 2019. He is starting his second year PhD program in Rhetoric and Composition here at Florida State University, he is originally from North Carolina and has been tutoring at writing centers for about three years. Andrew enjoys it more than teaching because he does not like the grading aspect of being a teacher.
Q: What can you say made you a better writer?
A: I didn’t really struggle with writing in high school and I think that’s because I was a pretty strong reader in high school and elementary and middle school, so I never really struggled a lot with that but I also I didn’t really have to think a whole lot about my writing in middle and high school I didn’t ever really know why or what made my writing good. The first time someone actually even told me I was a good writer was in my junior year of college and I was like “I am?”. I just thought I was an okay writer and I thought, it’s good enough to get a good grade but it wasn’t like I was this AMAZING writer just it wasn’t an image I had of myself until other teachers started pointing it out to me “Oh Andrew you’re a really talented writer!” and I always questioned if I was which I just genuinely hadn’t thought I was before but I definitely do a whole lot more thinking and reflecting like “okay well I’ve written this one thing right now but how am I going to make it better?”. Because that’s something that I usually have to do a lot, a lot of times with my longer papers too, if I’m writing something that’s 15 pages than if I’m writing 500 words give me an hour, hour and a half, two hours I can. I’ll write something that I don’t care about for a response or something but for a 15 page paper that’s about 3,000 words and I’m like okay I actually need to think a lot before I even write something down.
Q: Coming into college was your major going to be something English related?
A: It was going to be something very different, I was actually a theater major, when I first came to college it was theater then it was theater education and then I switched to English education. So i got English education for my Bachelor’s degree and then I got a Master’s in Literature, just because I wanted to be a little more qualified I was thinking “oh I can get a Master’s in English then maybe I’ll you know work in a newspaper for a website or something” I didn’t even know I was going to get into a PhD program I sort of just came about and applied to some programs where you get full funding or basically more or less a program will pay for you to be there it’s “Hey, you teach classes for us, and we’ll let you come here for a really massive discount basically for free”and you sign a contract and that. And I was thinking “goodness if some college is going to pay for me to get a PhD then maybe I will get one” and a college did so that’s what brought me here but No, I didn’t start off wanting to be an English Major.
Q: I know you said you were always a good writer but were there ever any struggles that you faced as a writer?
A: I remember learning, learning how to write good thesis statements was sometimes hard for me because I always wanted to make my thesis statement SUPER long and specific and I wanted to itemize every single thing I talked about in the paper and sometimes my high school teachers would be like “So Andrew you doing too much you need to relax” so one sentence or two. Because sometimes I think I had end dashes and semi- colons to get this really long statement at the end of my first paragraph and they were like “So, Andrew I don’t think you understand what we mean when we tell you do this it doesn’t need to be this long” leave it to me to take something simple and make it complicated. (laughs) Typical English major, let’s take something really simple and then overinterpret it until it turns meaningless.
Q: When you are tutoring writers, if they are having a hard time planning how do you help them get through that, what tips do you give them?
A: Sometimes I’ll show students what I do or sometimes if a student is having trouble getting started what I’ll sometimes do for them is if they come in with just hope and the directions and they’re just like “I’m so worried, I’ve never written a rhetorical analysis, I don’t even know what this is can you please help me?”. Sometimes I’ll just talk to them and I’ll just write down things that they say and then let them have it when they leave because sometimes, maybe students aren’t in the habit of writing down their own thoughts and I can just talk to the student and then write down the things that I think if they tell me something really great I’m going to write that down for you and give them a bulleted list of what we talked about in the session. Sometimes I tell my students or clients that come into the writing center that they don’t necessarily have to start at the beginning, even just getting something down on paper is better than a blank page because you can fix something if it’s bad if it’s nothing you can’t do something with nothing.
Q: As a composer, what is your favorite style of writing?
A: That’s hard because I don’t do much creative or expressive writing (laughs). I’m so used to writing English papers for class but I wouldn’t call that my favorite either, it’s my job I do it because I’m supposed to. I think I really like multi mobile writing, when I can write something that utilizes multiple things like pictures and words or I really like making powerpoints because that’s something where I can be expressive even though it’s something for my job or for school but I can be more creative. I was just in a class about online writing instruction and we got to make videos for online classrooms and I really loved doing that because I was able to be really expressive and do a whole lot more instead of being lame.
Q: What is the most rewarding part of being a writing tutor and helping students with their writing?
A: When I can see how relieved students are after leaving because sometimes students will come here in a panic and at the end of thirty minutes or an hour it all makes sense and they are thanking me. That’s really rewarding to know that I was able to do that for a student because sometimes when you are a teacher or a professor students will act differently around their professors than someone like me who is a tutor. There’s some things that students aren’t going to tell their professor and I’m glad I’m able to help students with that so it doesn’t feel artificial. Students will act differently around me when I’m their teacher than when I’m their tutor and it’s really rewarding that I can give students that relief that a professor might have been able to give them but I don’t have to be their professor.
Q: How do you use tutoring others as a way to gain more knowledge about writing?
A: I think tutoring helps me become a better teacher because there are some things that your students just won’t tell you or they won’t tell you everything. Sometimes a student may come in and say “my teacher keeps talking about rhetoric and I don’t know what that is and they just keep using the word and assume I know what it means.” I think that maybe the next time I teach a class on rhetoric maybe I should ask my students “do you guys know what I mean or do I need to spend 5 or 10 minutes giving a mini lesson” Things like that unless they are very brave a student won’t make it known that they don’t know what you mean but if I see other students in the writing center having certain struggles I never thought of it makes me think about avoiding certain things so my students don’t come to the writing center with those problems. Sometimes it could be intimidating for students that are worried about being confrontational or offensive by saying they don’t understand so it makes me a better teacher. The way I write is not the way my students are writing and I understand everyone isn’t the same way as me.