“My worst experience with gossip happened in junior high school”

A few weeks ago, I had a day where I tutored 4 hours straight of student after student with the same paper about gossip. At first, I thought it was kind of a fun paper because there was no research and a lot of the students were including dialogue. It seemed like a nice break from the more “serious” papers. But after tutoring 4 students, all of whom wrote about an experience from junior high school, I realized I was in for something repetitive and annoying, but also a bit helpful. Every time the student and I got to the part of the paper that went something like “My worst experience with gossip happened in junior high school,” I wanted to roll my eyes and tell them to write about something else! But then I realized that most of these students were 18 years old, so probably the most significant instance of gossip for them happened in grade school because they haven’t been out of that type of situation for very long and haven’t experienced gossip in any other context.

After a while of seeing the same thing over and over, with only a few papers that didn’t have many problems, I was able to better help the students because I was really familiar with the assignment. When I came to grips with the annoying aspect of the repetitiveness, I began to notice that many of the students were having the same difficulties in writing the paper. I wasn’t sure if it was because of something their professor failed to do or if it was because the students all had similar writing abilities. But I could see overall what everyone was doing with the paper, so I was able to give quicker and more effective suggestions with how to improve than I would have if it were my first time seeing the assignment. I was also able to assess how each student had written the paper in terms of structure and storytelling, so I came up with suggestions that would help make each paper at least a little unique. I don’t think I told the students that everyone’s paper was almost exactly the same, but I made sure not to give the same types of suggestions to everyone. Having to hide my boredom and irritation with the subject was sometimes difficult, but by the end of the 4-hour block, I felt like tutoring the same paper millions of times in a row might actually be a good thing because I might be able to become really effective in tutoring that specific assignment. Buy it’s also probably a good way to get really bored and irritated. Either way, I’m just glad every day isn’t like that one.