As student writing consultant, we find ourselves in a quite a bizarre situation. On one hand, we are serious workers in a highly intellectual profession. On the other hand, we are also students, working with other students from our school where almost everyone knows everyone. Our job demands professionalism, while our status as students somewhat undermine the authority over the subject that our "supposed" clients need our help with. Such role conflict rarely occurs, but I find it being a biting nuisance when it does.
One dinner, I was having meal with my freshman friends. One of them boasted on the compliments he just had on his latest draft. "I just spent 20 minutes bullshitting that paper up, and the writing fellow (the one assigned to his first-year seminar) wrote a whole bunch of good comments on it", he said, "that I had excellent idea, organization and such." His blatant disregard to his own writing really bugged me, but since I had a deep respect for our peer writing fellows, I had to bite back my tongue and assumed that my friend was a born writer with uncanny skills. It turned out as a shockingly and enraging contrary when a few days later, he asked me to look at another "bullshitted up" writing. It was closely identical to the stuff I normally threw in my garbage bin. "Was this the same kind that your writing fellow approved?", I asked. He replied with undisguised confidence: "Yes! It was so easy. Took me less than half an hour." At that time I thanked goodness it wasn't a real consulting session, meaning I was allowed to tell this to him, something I normally wouldn't: "Then I think it's perfect. There's nothing you need my help with."
I would go so far as to assume that my experience wasn't personal. My tutoring friend also told me about similar encounter, when the students coming in for the session were completely indifference about their work. That begs the question: "IF THEY DON'T CARE, WHY SHOULD WE?" Yet what angers me the most is that, why did the writing fellow commended that paper, when the writer himself thought it was worthless? Not only did it show that the writing fellow was incompetent, but it also brought about a bad reputation for the rest of us. Then again, we are all instructed to follow the ethics of the writing center, which is also that of American professionalism: be nice to your customers, no matter what. Yet to blindly interpret such guidelines as saying great things about their work even though they're crappy is a betrayal to the spirit of our noble profession. Are we supposed to make better writers by luring them into an illusion in which they're already good? My senior colleague that I'm shadowing said in such case it was necessary for us to speak our mind, albeit in a gentle manner, about what we really thought of the writers' work. Yet in so doing we run the risk of them going around saying that we are rude, uncooperative and cocky. It is a fine line we are walking.
I couldn't bear the thought of what I would do if someone brings me a crappy paper in a totally "give no shit" manner. What do you all think of this problem? What should we do about it? And how should we reinforce the working attitude of our writing fellows?
I would also get very frustrated by a writer who came to me in that sort of manner. I think the important thing is to focus on making them a better writer. Maybe they seem like they don't care because they are frustrated themselves. Enthusiasm in the consultation I think would go a long way to both help the writer and to keep from getting more frustrated.
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