Primary Consultant #5

Okay, last one. Here we go.

I had probably my least favorite primary consultant session a month ago. It was with a journalism student who felt very confident in her writing and just couldn't stop complaining about how ridiculous the professor grades because EVERYONE seems to be doing well except her. So, I said, let's do this thing.

She was writing a paper about causes and American involvement in the Vietnam War, and this client talked a mile a minute. Half the time I wasn't sure if she even wanted my help and instead just preferred to discuss how great her writing was and how inept everyone else seemed to be. The other half, she was arguing with me about my suggestions because someone ELSE told her this and that and how if she did this, that made more sense, and blah blah...so, that was frustrating. I feel that if you're coming to a writing center, you should at least entertain new ideas and perspectives, even if you wholeheartedly disagree with them. At least have the tact to politely ignore every single opinion the consultant gives you.

Nope. Not happening with this client. But I think, with my newly adopted non-directive approach, I was able to show her a few errors in her thought process without pointing them out. I asked her, "So, how do you know this?" and she replies, "Everyone knows this." And I said, "Is it even true?" And she said "How could it not be true?"

I wanted to die a few times, but I managed to ask her enough questions to show her that, no, that wasn't necessarily true, and no, it wasn't even something everyone else believed to be true. But she had a horrid fear of finding more sources for citing, so she decided to take out entire portions that either required citation or ended up not being relevant. She definitely seemed to want to put work into the paper, but she didn't seem to want to put in any work she deemed irrelevant or unacceptable.

It's difficult to deal with this type of client. I feel that no one is ever right or wrong in a session, but when you can't reach any kind of consensus on anything in a paper, it feels as though both of you are completely wasting your time, and in those situations, I feel I need to speak up and clearly express the responsibilities of the writing center, what we do here exactly, and how having a more open mind might help in the future.

Okay, I might not say the last part, but I feel as a center we need to come up with a blanket tactful statement for these situations. It's also possible I overlooked a few strategies to deal with it, but I think my frustration overcame my sense of clarity and direction. Hopefully I can manage to have a more level head in the future.