"don't want a policeman with a stick in his hand standing over me"

I've been mulling over Maggie's request for an entry detailing the evils of Japanese food.  To sate your ceaseless, restless, burning desire for ridiculousness, I'm copying over my essay about client behavior in a writing center.  This was originally meant for the EKU Writing Center newsletter -- I have no idea if it was ever put in, so you glorious people now get a chance to peruse my ideas for improvement.  I felt it would be imprudent, at best, to mention, in this essay, my idea for rotating knives along the entrance, as knowledge is half the battle (and, I believe, keeping that knowledge from those you wish to smite is the other half).  So, here it is:

Many works have been penned on the appropriate behavior of a tutor during his, her, or its individual sessions. A tutor should not fling curses, magical or otherwise, at a client. A tutor should not use personal opinion to dictate the direction of the session. A tutor should not confuse the client¹. A tutor should not work dark magicks in the blood of chickens, saving only the times it is required by comprehensive examinations.

Nothing (of note) has been laid out for the behavior of clients. The reasons are manifold: we, as tutors, cannot dictate the behavior of our clients, we are in place for the convenience of the clients, and we are employed to conform to the client’s needs². It is now time to point out a few suggestions, in the line of maritime laws, for the betterment of tutoring through the regulation of client behavior. These precepts are simple and generally humane, excepting requirements put to sessions by the UWR.

A client will not deliver unto the tutor an extraordinarily large paper hours before it is due. The idea of communication, in general, is faking a desire to listen to your companion. To listen to a tutor, a client must be able to make far-reaching changes to a paper, if called for. Bringing unto a tutor a twenty-page paper mere hours before it is due breaks the illusion of conversation, as all parties are painfully aware that nothing other than superficial changes will be made in the intervening hour and a half. Also, it is good to remember that we are taught never to judge a collection of words by its superficial values.

A client will not partake of substance abuse, legal or otherwise, without seeking the blessing of a deity, or permission from the tutor. Clients often do not understand the strictures placed upon them, and they rebel mightily, as Samson against the Philistines. Substance abuse is one habit, however, that has had no place in the tutoring session since the early 1800s. True, it was once used in an attempt to expand the client’s mind, in a desire to make the assimilation of knowledge easier, but was proven a futile exercise, as the Victorian men began to consider the philosophical implications of their hands and hunger for Cheetos.³ The substance abuse has proven distracting for clients and tutors alike.

The client shall not inform the tutor that he, she, or it is not a good writer at any point during the session. There are practical concerns here – a tutor must come to the work in an unbiased state, and slander (from the writer or no) will alter this state. It is also the tutor’s prerogative to make decisions about skill on their own – they have the training and capacity, after all. Finally, this claim may set up a self-perpetuating cycle, ultimately leading to the death of those involved, a wormhole looping space back into itself, and possibly the cessation of the universe’s expansion, drawing all the particles of existence back into themselves, crushing everyone and everything into a mass smaller than a pin’s head.

Clients shall not weep during sessions. This is unnerving, and destroys the ability of the tutor to effectively and objectively deal with the paper. The only thing, tissue-thin and constantly threatened by the darkness of the four worlds, standing between a tutor and madness, is his or her ability to cast off the veneer of humanity and dwell in the deepest pits of editing. The re-humanization of the client through tears and sobs breaks this barrier, sending the tutor into a spiraling descent into the depths of the pit, never to return.

The client will not, under any circumstances, insist on a simple “proofreading”. This is more dangerous than the client can possibly realize. The lore of tutors claims this is only to avoid mindless drudgery on the parts of both client and tutor – a paper that is simply proofread will only function on a grammatical and punctuation level; its possible deep flaws, concerning organization, laboring of points, and habitual usage of Nazi propaganda cannot be caught. While true, this does not break the surface of the lake known as “proofreading.” The legends, long lost and now held in a secret trust under the Los Alamos testing sites, say that “proofreading” was once, truly, the “reading of proof.” This was a risky ritual involving the events of an initiate’s life writ small on slips of brushed animal hide. These slips were coated in mucous, set aflame, and cast into the ink-dark rivers of yore⁴, to float in their pyretic glory toward an oracle who would devour the ashes and pronounce the “proof” of the initiate’s life. If the proofs were grand and worthy of praise⁵, the initiate was brought fully into adulthood, with all the responsibilities and jaunty headdresses this involved. If the proofs were weak and tasting of saltpeter, the initiate was flung into the maw of a great kraken-gator, scourge of the pre-modern society⁶. This haunting legacy is the true reason tutors must always resist the siren-like call of the client to simply “proofread” papers.

1 Cats are perfectly acceptable targets of confusion – see Cats, Treatment, Confusion and Party-games.

2 It is not necessary to point out the fallacies behind these assumptions.

3 Of course, this mind-expanding ritual traces its way back to the writers of yore – Coleridge, Poe, and B. Jackson were well-known paint-huffers, but ultimately the fumes entered their brains en masse and destroyed them utterly. The fumes managed to cross into the brains by sneaking through the Alps, on elephants, but the moral still remains true, probably.

4 Darker by far than the ink-dark rivers of today.

5 Anthropologists feel this was determined by gassy by-product – the more produced in the oracle’s gastric system by the ashy meal, the more grandiose the life.

6 See Scourges, Pre-modern, Amphibi-diles, Kraken-gator.