Being Human in the Writing Center
/BY ANNA ROLLINS
It’s 9 p.m., and my kids are settled and asleep. Finally, I have a chance to grab my laptop to work on revisions to an essay. My writing time—like so many of the students who visit the Writing Center I direct at Marshall University—is often relegated to the bookends of my day. As a full-time working mother of three, I empathize with students’ busy schedules and the number of demands they may be juggling as they complete their college courses.
So when I pitch our Writing Center’s services to students on campus, I am conscious of our high-tech competition. I see the appeal ChatGPT may have to busy students. What is the benefit to booking a half-hour consultation with a peer tutor when one can prompt AI to “make my essay more concise” in a matter of seconds?
In David Brooks’ February 2023 piece in The New York Times entitled “In the Age of A.I., Major in Being Human,” he argues that if “you’re a college student preparing for life in an A.I. world, you need to ask yourself: Which classes will give me the skills that machines will not replicate, making me more distinctly human? You probably want to avoid any class that teaches you to think in an impersonal, linear, generalized kind of way—the kind of thinking AI will crush you at.” He then goes on to list skill sets that cannot be replaced by machines.
Writing Center tutors have much to gain by leaning into their humanity. Though a machine may be able to check grammar, make suggestions for tone, and aid in finding research, this assistance is linear and generalized.
Here are some ways peer tutors set themselves apart, simply by cultivating the qualities that make them distinctly human:
1. Embracing Embodiment
Read your paper aloud. Make notes in the margins with a pencil. Cut up your paragraphs and rearrange them on the floor. Highlight your thesis with a yellow marker. So many Writing Center practices push students to get out of their heads and into their bodies.
Likewise, Writing Centers can cultivate an embodied experience in the physicality of the setting. I was out of the house recently, and my newborn daughter needed to nurse. I prefer to feed my baby from the comfort of my own home—but I was able to find a room in a public space designed exclusively for breastfeeding. There was a rocking chair, a lamp, and a shag pink rug that I was able to dig my toes into as my daughter latched and sucked. These small details made my experience enjoyable and memorable.
Even though I am often tempted to choose convenience, I am still drawn to curated experience. This same attention to detail and setting is something that can set Writing Centers apart from their disembodied competition.
2. Breaking out of Binaries
The blank page offers endless opportunity. There is nothing more exciting than sitting down to write and landing upon an idea or scene or argument that you had never really considered. Writing reveals the expansiveness of the human mind, hidden secrets, or nearly-forgotten memories from the past.
Tutors can guide students to this experience of wonder in the Writing Center setting. Rather than approaching a writing assignment like a hacker trying to crack a code, tutors can teach students to treat the process like an explorer navigating new land. Tutors can encourage students to try on new ideas and be suspicious of lines of inquiry that are formulaic, overly familiar, or scripted.
3. Cultivating a Humane Culture
So much of what a person needs in a clinical or tutoring setting is not always apparent to the individual coming in for assistance. Often, needs are determined by the more experienced practitioner. The information required to make that determination is acquired through active listening and conversation. Quality care often does not come through efficiency but through patience. Numbers that appeal to disconnected administration are not always indicative of results.
To preserve a tutor’s ability to work as a human, you must be humane as a director. This means scheduling breaks and reinforcing boundaries. When tutors are treated with care and respect, when they are not expected to perform as machines, their work mirrors this treatment.
Writing Centers have the mission of creating better writers and not just better writing. This person-centered approach is precisely what sets Writing Centers apart from the AI students may be so tempted to use.
Work Cited
Brooks, David. “In the Age of A.I., Major in Being Human.” The New York Times, Feb. 2, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/opinion/ai-human-education.html