How My On-Campus Job Changed My Life

Welcome to college! Do you know where your classes are? Have you paid your bursar bill? Have you made any friends? Have you studied? Paid that bursar bill? Are you eating healthy? Have you gone grocery shopping? Gone to the gym? OVERDUE BURSAR BILL DUE NOW!!

These are some of the many questions-slash-demands-to-pay-my-dang-bill that I faced during my first semester of college. These questions – daunting as they may be – represent some of the most important tenets of college life: money, friends, food, education. If I’m being honest, I struggled at handling all of the above. I was on scholarship, but I felt like I was running my bank account dry. I had people that I liked in my classes, but I felt like I wasn’t making any true connections. I was eating, but I was definitely eating take out or at the dining hall every night. The one thing I was doing well at (but still STRESSED OUT over) was classwork. I was in a lot of writing classes – I was a professional writing major – so my homework consisted of reading and writing (something I loved). However, even though I knew I was good at those two things, I still worried, stressed, FREAKED OUT, over if I was good enough.

Before I left for Thanksgiving break my first semester, one of my professors encouraged me to apply to become a tutor at the university’s Writing Center. She told me that it would be a great place for me to work, because it was work that revolved around written texts. I think she may have also known that it would be a great place for me to find lifelong friends and a lifelong calling for helping others through writing.

One thing of note: I am not an expert on getting campus jobs, nor am I trying to say that everyone should get a campus job (or a job at all during college). I am simply a woman with two English degrees and a couple (12) semesters of college under my belt (and yes, I did pay my Bursar bill). What makes my chapter important, and maybe helpful to those of you just entering college, is that I fought to make it through my degrees and I won, because of the fact that I had a room full of people behind me at every step of the way. I entered college a semester before COVID-19 shut down the entire world, so most of my Bachelor’s degree was done behind a Zoom screen. I was diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, and Social Pragmatic Communication Disorder; in short, I was struggling. Through all the hardships, I still got it done and I still made it where I wanted to be because I found myself in a significant, supportive environment. That is what I hope readers will gain from this chapter: not necessarily that writing centers are great (they are, please use your local writing center!!!) but knowing that hope exists for anyone in college – and that you too can pay your bursar bill eventually.

The Before

In high school, I was a much different person than I am today. I was socially recluse, yet yearned for connection and felt misery when denied it. I held so many dichotomous views that, looking back, it’s still hard to piece together what exactly was going through my mind. Much like I do today, I valued justice and integrity and success. However, to me, success could only be found through whittling myself down to the bone. I know that I turned away so many friends based on how I valued education and accountability. To me, you had to follow the rules, and if you didn’t, then you didn’t fit in my world.

These years were very hard. It was only years later that I would receive a diagnosis of Depression, Anxiety, and Social Pragmatic Communication Disorder. Even now, I struggle; some nights I sit . But, little 16-year-old Katie didn’t know that something was wrong with her brain; she thought there was something wrong with her. I became hateful towards myself, and even towards others. I was judgey, honestly a bitch, and my mind spiraled. I had suicidal thoughts – never acted upon or thought out – I just wanted to stop living the life I was in. I wasn’t listening to me.

Society said that people with depression and anxiety were outcasts. You couldn’t have anything wrong with you if you wanted to succeed. I listened to society. I hated feeling different. I hated being different. I hated having to act like someone other than me in a desperate attempt to get people to like me (later I learned that this was called masking). I cried and cried and felt like no one heard anything. My parents didn’t know about my emotional struggles. I had to keep it in, or I’d fail just like society told me I would.

Starting college was hard. Even though I had taken AP courses in high school, I wasn’t used to others having an expectation of excellence for me. My common mindset of going above and beyond wasn’t achievable. Have I done enough work? You need to do more. Have I made myself seen? No one cares for you. Do I talk too much? You should shut up and let other people talk. I lived with a roommate, undiagnosed depression and anxiety, and had to go home in the middle of my second semester because of COVID. I’ve spent countless nights crying on my bathroom floor thinking that my life was falling apart because I wasn’t seeing immediate success – feeling like I wasn’t immediately being seen or listened to.

Luckily, I had mentorship from a very wonderful professor (she knows who she is). She was the first-ever professor I had a class with for my major courses, in a class on writing as a profession. She introduced me to the idea of labor-based grading, which taught me to value my content and work over the grade values they would receive. I remember being so caught up nearly every week of the semester on if my work was good enough, and still having fears of being too active in class; being the talker that everyone hates. She encouraged me to speak my mind and to let my voice be heard.

I remember that I was particularly interested in ghost-writing as a profession and how it worked. She motivated me to do some extensive research and gave me potential avenues to investigate when drafting my final project. When I turned that final paper in, she told me that I had done great work, and that the topic was one I could continue to look into (more on this later).

She helped me get a job as a tutor at the campus Writing Center. One day in class, she straight up asked me if the Writing Center would be a place I would want to work at. When I asked for more information, she answered my questions and pointed me to other tutors that were in the same class as me. When I got that job, it taught me more about communicating and being a person than I could have ever imagined. I learned how to listen, how to be a mentor, and what my personal educational beliefs were. I’ve even been able to gain a leadership position and make even more connections through the Writing Center, something I would’ve never done had I not had her support.

The Interview

So I ended up applying to the Writing Center and was invited to come in for an interview. I dressed nice, wore a full face of make-up (which I rarely do because I have very, very sensitive skin), and put on my only pair of heels. I walked a half a mile in Oklahoma fall weather – strangely hot for November for those not from OK – and felt like I was dying once I got to the Student Union, where the Writing Center is housed. I took the stairs (bad idea) and was ready to drop dead by the time I made it to the 4th floor.

When I made it to the corner room the Writing Center was in, I felt like I was going to pee my pants. I had built up this crazy professional image in my mind of what a tutor was supposed to be, and I obviously didn’t think I fit that image. But when I walked in, there were students like me: jeans, t-shirts, sticker-covered laptops, stressed and highly caffeinated.

The interview went as good as it could’ve, given my anxiety to do well. I was sweating so hard, I didn’t answer the questions very well, and I just flat out did not give it my all. Some of the questions asked me to put myself in the shoes of a tutor, something I wasn’t prepared for. One question asked me how I would handle a student whose views were not founded in evidence. I was gobsmacked, because I hadn’t thought that I’d have to work with other students who really did believe the Earth was round or that water wasn’t wet (stupid examples, but trying to make a point here! I was really thinking of more serious versions of these scenarios…). Other questions asked me why I wanted the job, and I couldn’t help but think to myself: “Why does anyone want a job? What else can I say except money? In this economy???” I walked out feeling like I had bombed my one good opportunity. I went to bed that night, lying awake, staring at the ceiling, thinking of all the better ways I could have answered the questions: “Oh I should’ve said this!” or “Wow, that would’ve been a way better answer, I am never getting that job.”

So when I saw my professor for the next class, I was scared to say the least. I felt like I had let her down in a way: I felt that my inability to prove my worthiness for a workplace nearly perfect for my major proved that I wasn’t cut out for that degree path, or cut out for college at all. However, when I made it to class, she gave me very positive feedback, telling me I did great and she’d know more details soon about me getting hired on. It was almost a sigh of relief, hearing her support me even when I thought I failed tremendously (relevant side note: she has continued to support me tremendously through many perceived failures, so I learned that her support wasn’t just a one-time thing).

I heard back from the Writing Center a week later where they offered me a job as an undergraduate tutor. I accepted, filled out my paperwork, and my first day was set for the spring semester. Little would I know that accepting that offer would truly change the path my life would take.

Tutoring

I started tutoring in January of 2020. I had to shadow other, more experienced tutors and do practice sessions with them before I was set free to the world of tutoring writing. I remember the bad more than I remember the good of that first semester: situations I was unprepared for, COVID, the university shutting its doors and moving entirely virtual. My life was pretty much upended and turned on its head. I remember being so stressed about my first session that I only got 1.5 pages into a 3 page report. I couldn’t think straight, I was worried I wasn’t doing things correctly, and I was stressed that someone would call me out on not being good enough. From there, I started to hit my groove; sessions moved much more smoothly and I gained confidence in my ability to help peers with their writing. I learned how to step back and realize that I was working with peers from different backgrounds, writing abilities, and ways of writing; in short, I had to learn how to lead my peers to their best writing, rather than lead them to what my best writing was or what I thought good writing should be.

I remember one particular student that I worked with a few times in that semester. This student gave me a lot of pushback: I left each session feeling more frustrated than successful. They would come asking for help with exam essays – which I felt wasn’t ethical for me to do – and essentially treated me like I had to write their papers for them. I was appalled each time they came in with how they would disregard my questions for brainstorming and trying to draw out ideas just to ask me, “So what specifically should I say?” This student made me so mad; I felt like I was being used as a free essay writer and not as a tutor. When I voiced this irritation to my bosses and peer leaders, they were quick to support me. They gave me tips on how to redirect the sessions and even offered to sit in the next time that student came to visit me at the Writing Center. Of course, COVID put a stop to that offer, but the sentiment remained: I was not alone.

Moving Beyond

After a few semesters of working as a tutor, my professor approached me with a new opportunity: helping with the undergraduate tutor interviews held online. I was excited! This was an opportunity for me to prove that I could be helpful, reliable, and someone that the Writing Center could trust to put a good foot forward. Whenever a new application came through, us helpers were notified of the times they could interview and came to an agreement on who would attend which interviews (didn’t want too many cooks in the metaphorical kitchen). When it was my turn to help with the interviews, I would sign into the Zoom room a few minutes before the start time and those of us in the room would figure out who was going to ask what question. I liked asking one specific question: “Imagine you begin a session and a student comes to you in tears. They have a paper due that night at midnight, and they haven’t started it at all. What do you do?” For some reason, I felt like it was the best place for me to be in the interview process; not at the start but not at the end, a perfect middleman.

Once I started helping with interviews, I had the chance to start leading “mentor groups,” which are these bi-weekly meetings we had for tutors to connect and discuss current issues or how readings we may have done connect with our work as tutors. I lead a mentor group of two other tutors, and I felt like it was both a productive and stupid use of time. It felt productive in that I was able to get a better idea of how others approached tutoring and was able to help others figure out what they should do to face challenges they encountered. At the same time, it felt like a stupid use of time, because with there only being three people in meetings, we only ever met for 15 minutes maximum; we just didn’t have enough to talk about. It was frustrating, putting an hour’s worth of preparation into a meeting that lasted a quarter of what it should have. It was empowering, helping others.

After a semester of being a mentor group leader, I suddenly had a decision to make. One of the writing center’s assistant directors was graduating, so a spot was opening up for the following year. I went back and forth with myself over whether I should apply for the opening, because I was only an undergraduate who’d been in the writing center for a year and a half. I ultimately submitted an application for consideration, and my bosses put me on a list for interviews. There ended up being two graduate students and myself in the candidate pool. I felt like my assistant director interview with just as good as my undergraduate tutor interview: I felt like I stumbled through the questions and didn’t give a good representation of what I saw myself in that position. I knew I wanted to boost the morale of tutors, as coming out of COVID brought down overall positivity in the space. With all the negativity in the world, I wanted the assistant directors to not only improve the tutoring happening in the center, but improve the overall livelihood of tutors and students who used the space. I also wanted to focus on inner-mechanisms of the center, specifically on our online presence: I planned to do my degree-required internship on top of assistant director duties by creating new marketing visuals and redesigning the website.

I waited a while to hear back from my bosses and the other remaining assistant directors. Many lived out of state, while others were in-and-out due to graduate student obligations. By the end of Spring 2021, I found out I got the position.

Riding the Assistant Director to Graduate Student-Instructor Pipeline

Working as an assistant director was fun: I still tutored, but I got to do more behind-the-scenes work that really made me feel useful. Also, by being in a higher leadership position, I became more privy to the issues all tutors were having with sessions. For example, plagiarism became a bigger concern than I expected it to, and with my interest in ghostwriting, I launched a project (that later became my undergraduate honors thesis) on plagiarism and its effects on perceptions of college writing. By being in that leadership position, I saw myself gaining the ability to do more than just write: I was helping others write and helping others help others, too. Through this strangely stacked help-as-work, I realized that helping others through writing is what I wanted to do with my degree. I saw myself not only doing something I liked, but also doing something worthwhile and meaningful to my community.

I ended up discussing graduate school with my professor-now-advisor. She helped me through the steps to applying to graduate programs (which could honestly be its own chapter in this collection), wrote a letter of recommendation, and stayed supportive even when I thought I wasn’t doing the best I could do. I got accepted into the graduate program at the university and was even offered an assistantship. I graduated with my Bachelors in English with Honors, and I was ready to take on the next step of my life.

Part of the duties of the assistantship is to teach, so I ended up teaching my first semester of graduate school. That was another monster (and one guiding topic of my master’s thesis), but I persisted. Because the writing center was staffed mostly by graduate students, I found myself with ample time to go over lesson plans, ask questions, and brainstorm with my peers. New friends joined the writing center, and I finally felt like I had a home. I wasn’t just at work or with friends: I was somewhere where I truly made a difference and didn’t feel like the outcast.

I finished my MA just a few months ago (from when I’m writing this), and I’m already planning on my transition to PhD programs. The decision to move forward with my education in my field was based on the fact that I saw the impact helping with writing has on students, peers, and the community in which universities reside. I wanted to continue to make that impact, and I knew that I would have to go farther in my studies to achieve the goals I want. The decision was an easy one, made easier by the fact that my friends and writing center family helped me see through seven semesters that I am good enough. I am good enough; what a strange thing to say, especially for someone who never thought they were. Finding that family helped me have hope, in my abilities as a student, as a leader, as an administrator, as a friend. Hope is what my on-campus job brought me, and a future is what it led me to.

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