Some of you may remember that back in the Spring a couple of my collegeaus and I participated in a regional peer tutoring conference in Boise. While some of you may have thought that was dorky, the presentation earned me (and two of my colleagues) a trip to Vegas where we got to perform our monologues at a national conference. The monologues are loosely based off Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues, so basically we had the opportunity to publicly voice some of the less likeable aspects of our jobs while sympathetic listeners laughed. Kind of fun really, I recommend all workplaces implement some sort of simliar program as therapy.  Since the complete monologues compromise 11 pages and take 30 minutes to perform, I have listed some of the highlights below:

From Ashley: I swear, I deal with the same kind of crap every single day. It’s always the same. I mean today, he rushed in, looked at me with wild, frantic eyes, and between spurts of breath, recounted the story I have heard soo many times before. He sputtered about how he needed an appointment, explained that his paper was due in three hours, and he had to get the points the teacher was giving him for coming into the writing center, and that if I didn’t let him in he was going to fail his class. As much as I wanted to tell him that we have an endless supply of tutors and slots, and as stressful as the day had already been with the semester quickly coming to a close, I put on a happy face and explained the details that I knew were only going to make his eyes plead…more.

From Jeff: Let’s just say I’ve never had a productive session tutoring at the desk before. Obviously, there’s just a barrage of interruptions, and then there’s the whole “you can’t possibly be knowledgeable about anything because you’re a receptionist” thing. Listen, I’ve been a writing tutor since you were in junior high. I’ve earned the opportunity to sit at reception for a few hours a week answering both the rhetorical and grammatical, as well as administrative questions that most new tutors just don’t know the answers to yet. It is an absolute privilege to be tutored by a receptionist. I wish I could tell someone that, how it’s a privilege, but nobody’s coming.

From me: Don’t even get me started on the incompetence of the computer lab consultants that work next door. All day long confused students walk into the Writing Center and hesitantly ask if they can use one of our computers, mistaking our collection of four out-dated PCs for the lab. Even after finding the lab, half of the students return to ask how to login or request a laptop. Once, I even escorted a student to the corner of the lab where a consultant was updating his Facebook page. “Hi Morgan,” I said squinting at the name scrawled on the floppy disk strung around his neck, “I have a student here with a problem, I though maybe you could help him.”