Random Trivia (Washington)
Pickleball
You walk up to a student waiting to get help. What is the first thing you say?
Introduce yourself!
A student asks us what grade they’d receive on their current assignment. What should we say to pivot this question’s direction?
You know the rubric and class better than I do; how do you feel you've accomplished what the rubric is asking?
Jordan, a first-semester freshman, drops a 10-page organic chemistry lab report on the desk 45 minutes before it is due. Jordan pushes the paper toward the tutor and asks, "Can you just look over this, fix all the calculation errors, and rewrite the conclusion so it sounds smart?"
The tutor has to gently explain center boundaries—that tutors do not proofread, edit, or do coursework for students—and pivot Jordan into working through a single calculation step-by-step.
How many Hydrogen atoms are in the chemical compound of water?
2! (H20)
What long-running TV drama series takes place in a hospital in Seattle?
Grey's Anatomy
What question do we ask students early into a session to grasp if we should explain how the LC works?
“Have you ever been/Is this your first time at the (WaCC/QSC/LC)?”
When a student comes in with multiple overwhelming issues, how should you decide which is most important?
Ask them!
Mia, a sophomore taking macroeconomics, sits down quietly with her arms crossed and starts tearing up. Mia has a midterm tomorrow morning, missed two weeks of lectures due to the flu, and looks completely paralyzed by a graph of aggregate demand.
The tutor uses a grounding technique, putting aside the massive study guide, asking Mia to name one concept she actually understood from chapter one, and building up slowly from known foundations.
What does HDMI stand for?
High-Definition Multimedia Interface
What serial killer, who killed at least 30 young women in the 1970s, grew up in Tacoma, Washington and went to college at the University of Puget Sound and the University of Washington?
Ted Bundy
Students tend to come with a multitude of goals or issues; What is the simplest way to pinpoint their goal?
Ask a question like: “What are we working on today? / What would you like to work on?”
When helping a student on their final project, you ask to see the professor's rubric; However, the professor's rubric is 4 words: "Do a good job". What direction should the session take to best help the student?
The student may want to denounce the professor or complain. We should affirm their struggles before going into the project itself. When moving into the final project we can try to refer to guidelines from previous assignments or general academic advice.
Tyler, a football player, walks in wearing team gear and slumps heavily into a chair. Tyler admits right away that his coach mandated three hours of weekly tutoring for his freshman English composition class and that he "doesn’t care about MLA formatting or classic literature."
The tutor skips lecturing about grammar rules, asks Tyler what topic he actually does like talking about, and uses that subject to draft a practice thesis statement together.
When graphing equations what is the most common formula used?
Slope intercept form
y=mx +b
Where is the first ever Starbucks located?
Pike Place Market!
When an Online (Zoom) Session begins, the student greets you with their camera on. As tutors, how should we interact with this behavior?
Turn our camera on as well
When a student asks for help, but they haven't even started the assignment yet, what should we begin by doing?
Asking questions! We don't know their learning style and we can't say for certain what they'd like to do. For writing we may create an outline but only if that benefits the student.
Chen, an international engineering student whose first language is Mandarin, brings in a physics problem set. Chen understands the mathematical formulas perfectly fine, but loses points because he cannot parse the dense, wordy English phrasing in the textbook word problems.
The tutor and Chen read through the prompt side-by-side, translating complex verbal word cues into mathematical symbols (e.g., changing "accelerates uniformly" into a = constant), focusing heavily on vocabulary rather than just arithmetic.
What City has a citation method named after it?
Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS)
How do you spell Erik's last name?
Echols
A student begins an appointment noticeably disturbed. It seems the session won’t continue until the student has a chance to calm down and reset. What do you call this process of regulating the student’s emotions?
Emotional Co-regulation!
You begin the session and notice there are 4 students in this group asking for help. How might your approach shift when talking with this group?
Typically, a larger group will have questions or goals prepared, ask them what those are.
Marcus, a first-year student who relocated three hours from home, earned a D on his first calculus exam. Marcus has started arriving 25 minutes early to every session, texting the tutor on weekends about roommate dramas, and asking for the tutor's personal cell phone number instead of using the official booking portal
The tutor must reset professional boundaries, redirect the conversation back to math problem sets, and offer to connect Marcus with campus mental health or student life services.
Quadratic Formula?
-b +/- the square root of b squared minus 4ac over 2a