What I Exactly Actually Do

 It is official. This job HAS grown on me. I work closely with faculty and look on in pity I desperately try to hide, as they battle with the simple syllabus, grading deadlines, uncooperative technology, and miniscule freedom in their classrooms, while at their backs, the State DOE's scythe busily slashes away at developmental and preparatory courses. I do not regret choosing this road.

I sit in my office, spider-like, weaving schedules, material, emails for my writing center, pulling a thread here to cancel an absent tutor's hour, adding a stand there to extend a shift. My staff often peer into the glass walls of my office, and I can see bewilderment  on their visage: WHAT exactly do I actually DO in there? I can see the same bemusement on my family and friends' faces about the same question. Upon asking what I do at the college now that I am no professor and receiving my answer, they awkwardly try to exhibit recognition, nodding "Ahh" and exclaiming, "Really? How Wonderful!"

I often mentor others who have been appointed to a parallel positions across campuses. These people are usually previous faculty, adjuncts, retired editors and the like. They are mystified at the job they are expected to do and ask me the same question. They try to understand this by demanding that I describe a typical work day. I try my best. I do. Promise!

I find it so difficult, almost impossible to describe exactly what I actually do. You see, one cannot be trained for this job. There is no degree that prepares you for it. The job description hints at its real nature with a general list of expected duties. This job did not exist when I was being educated. There is no real way to correlate this job to anything similar. The only way to know it is through side glances as something slides away just beyond one's range of vision. 

In a way, this job is full of contradictions: I can quite easily do it outside my office, yet my presence here becomes imperative. I can help students understand chapters, concepts, and ideas, yet I may not teach. I cannot actually hire anyone, yet no one can be hired without me. The center is not part of mandatory curriculum, yet the curriculum may not be conquered without it. My work demands solitude,  yet I am encouraged to collaborate. I am to help improve a paper, yet I may not make a single mark on it. When a student requests answers to problems, I am to assist them, yet I may provide no answers, and that includes grammar and sentence structure errors. In fact, one of the major skills I train my staff in is answering all questions with questions. 

My center has, I am so proud to say, got quite good at its job, attested by our increasing attendance, especially by desperate students. I genuinely wish I could take all the credit for this achievement, but truthfully, I may not take any. It is the nature of the job that hones people to do it well. Essentially, this job requires all that one has that makes one a civilized, reasonably educated, more or less socially adjusted human participant of the milieu that a writing center is part of, should that community be fortunate enough to boast one.

in my most arrogant hour, I could describe my job as a job of the future. It is an unwieldy job, but I have always loved contradictions. Nothing else defines balance to me, the Middle Way that Buddha recommends.  It is a way one often has to carve out for oneself, a frontier with sure yet nebulous boundaries. The only way to know the terrain is to walk it. 

What can I say, my patient Reader? I like this place and could willingly waste my time in it. Should you have use of me, look for my inky cloak huddled behind glass walls in a corner of the library at the edge of this city. I will look up when you knock on my door.