Roosevelt may have said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” but as I sat down with one of my ESL students who was on the edge of failing the one last class she needed to graduate, my own inability to help her successfully became what I feared the most. This particular student had specifically come to work with me from the School of Continuing studies. A mother of two with a law degree from her home country, she was clearly smart, educated and persistent, returning to get her undergraduate degree in America even though she had not been to school in twenty years. With that said however, her English analytical writing was very much at a middle school level. When she came to meet with me two nights before her paper was due, panic flooded through me as I realized that her paper was all over the place and would by no means get her the type of grade she needed to pass the English course that she had taken and failed the previous semester.
It was at this moment that I realized that what I feared most as a consultant was not encountering an abrasive student or being unprepared for a session, but letting down a student who clearly needed my help. This particular student, however, almost seemed to be unable to be helped because of her desire to “just be done with the paper.” Although I knew what she wanted was for me just to make some line edits, give her a few suggestions about her conclusion and send her on her way, I couldn’t do that. As a result, I was not only left with the task of somehow figuring out how to salvage this paper without making her re-write the entire thing and balance her growing anxiety and frustration as the list of my suggestions grew too.
Although I recognize that as consultants, we have to remove ourselves personally from the situation and not feel completely responsible for the success or progress of the student or use it to measure our effectiveness as a tutor, it is much easier that say than to do it. As the student with whom I had worked with many times before sat before me, I felt responsible for helping her get back on track because I had the knowledge and the realization that she didn’t have, that if she did not, she would fail. As a result, I was more afraid for her than she was for herself. Steve Sherwood speaks to this idea in his article “Apprenticed to Failure: Learning from the Students We Can’t Help” when he states, “We feel anguish when we fail to help students because we invest ourselves in and care deeply about our work. If the opposite were true, if we did not care and did not strive for excellence, we would find neither safety nor satisfaction.” It is therefore, the result of this very situation that I felt afraid to fail because I felt afraid of the very same “anguish” Sherwood describes.
In the end, I followed the age old principal, “Do your best and that’s all you can do.” Often as a writing consultant, I feel that if I don’t correct an obvious grammatical error or tell them to fix a particular topic sentence, it is my fault if they get marked off for that in the end. However, eventually, as I did with that particular student, I took a step back and remembered that it was not my paper and in the end it was she that needed to take responsibility for the content and quality of the paper overall. Although this didn’t get rid of my fears or even some of my guilt at knowing I may have not been able to help her enough, it helped me to relax enough so that I didn’t get discouraged in future sessions to come.
That is an extremely difficult situation to handle as a writing consultant-- I felt nervous just reading it. It is important to remember, as you did, that the only thing we can do as writing consultants is our best job. Otherwise, it is in the hands of the students to take our commentary in stride and put in the necessary work to create a better product.
ReplyDeleteWhat a fine and heartfelt post. I hope you will recount some of this in class tomorrow. We will be dealing with writers rather like the one you describe here.
ReplyDeleteThere are emotional boundaries to never cross in professional work. I would say that when a writer's stress becomes your own, it's time to back away.
This sounds like a particularly stressful and potentially disheartening situation. Of course consultants work at the Writing Center because it is a job but at the same time they have chosen that job because it is a way to help others. Thus, it would be hard to see a student who just is not making any progress despite your best efforts. At that point I agree you need to try to distance yourself somewhat and remember that, no, it is not your paper. Still, that could be quite difficult.
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