Indoctrinating me with every note

There is surely a difference between education and indoctrination, but it's hard to draw an exact line between the two. We all have our own set of opinions and biases, but we aren't always actively aware of them. This is why it can be easy to accidentally throw a bit of indoctrination into every tutoring session. I usually know better than to openly impose my liberal (ok, liberal for Utah) views on tutees and other strangers, but they are sneaky and sometimes slip out.

For example, I worked on an online submission about the gay marriage issue. I bit my lip and refrained from replying with "Your argument is wrong on every level, you homophobic moron!" However, in hindsight, I realize that I did offer much more criticism than I normally would for an online submission. This was before Stephanie's presentation, so I didn't have the benefit of explaining how each argument was faulty, but I did my best to point out every single gap in logic. I tried to correct for my own opinions, but it was impossible to completely separate myself from them.

This leads me to the question of whether or not I abused my rights/privileges as a tutor. On the one hand, I did not ever state my opinion on the subject and my suggestions, if followed, would have helped the student strengthen his paper tenfold. On the other hand, I could have offered one or two friendly comments about making sure all arguments were supported and left it at that.

This is likely the case with most of us, including professors. No matter what role we are playing, we will always be ourselves.

I can't concentrate. Everyone in the Writing Center is singing. They promised to stop, but it was a lie. A series of lies, actually.