Tutor profile: Emily C.

What is the most important part of the writing process?

All parts of the writing process are important! It is key for individuals struggling with their writing to understand that the writing process is often a bit more complicated then simply traveling from assignment to turned-in essay, and that the writing process often looks different for many people.

What is the most important advice you would give to a student struggling with success in study skills?

What works for one person will not always work for another. When a particular study skill or regimen is not working for a particular student, rather than the student or the skill/regimen itself being flawed, it is simply a mismatch of style. In other words, it is important to think about study skills as tools, just as we might think about tools in the kitchen. If we tried to chop something using a spoon, and it (obviously) was not working very well, would we spend tons of time beating ourselves up or blaming the spoon for not working for our task? No, rather, we would find a different tool that would work better for us and for the task at hand. We should think about study skills similarly as tools in our lives to advance us in tasks.

How would you differentiate between anthropology and sociology as disciplines?

Having a Bachelor's degree in Sociology and a Master's in Anthropology, I often am faced with questions along this vein--how do you differentiate between the different specific disciplines all grouped within the social science realm? The easy answer is to explore the way that sociology deals more with society as a whole, and the quantitative (more large-scale, numeric value-based) analysis gleaned from studying this large-scale data pool (of society), while social anthropology deals more with comparative cultural analysis, choosing to focus on qualitative (smaller-scale, often interview-based) analysis of smaller-scale data pools. But what I always make sure to mention is my love for anthropology's emphasis on shared storytelling, the integration of individual narratives into a larger whole which is then compared to larger structures in order to make sense of and place it.