18. More about accepting praise – and criticism
It is my observation that students frequently use the pronoun “you” in the abstract plural sense when giving both praise and criticism. By this I mean that a student’s comment is often addressed to ALL tutors (or to MOST tutors), and not just you who happens to be working with the student at that particular moment. For example, a student might comment, “I wish you would solve problems the way that the instructor has taught us.” Upon hearing this, you might think to yourself, “But I DO solve this problem the way the instructor has taught it!” And in fact, maybe you do. But perhaps this student has worked with multiple tutors, and not all of them do approach this problem in the same way that you and the instructor do (not to mention the fact that not all instructors of the very same course use the same approach for a given problem type). This comment may well be an example of one in which the pronoun “you” is actually not referring to you personally, but instead is designating all of – or the majority of – tutors that this student has worked with.
Another example is when a student is excessively complimentary, saying something like, “I never would have made it through the semester without you!”, when in fact this is the first time that you’ve worked with this student. This is an obvious case where the word “you” must be referring to all the tutors with which the student has worked over the semester, even though the student’s phrasing was not unambiguous and might have misled you.
In the course of my 9 years of tutoring at PV, one time I had a peculiar experience. A student said to me that I had really done her harm when helping her with her homework. She indicated that every one of the problems that we did together was marked wrong by the instructor, and that I had hurt her chances of passing this course. Upon hearing this, I was very upset. I could not understand how this could be. I knew at an intellectual level that I was able to do the work, and I really could not comprehend this situation at all. To make matters worse, I could not remember working with her the week before, when I was supposed to have caused the problem. At the end of that tutoring session, I learned that she had filled out a student evaluation of me – one of dozens that I have gotten over the 9 years – and it rated me “poor” on all criteria. This really bothered me, causing both self-doubts and a sick feeling within. I asked myself, “why are you doing this if you are doing more harm then help to the students?”
As it turns out, it was a case of mistaken identity. Some other tutor – I never did learn who – had helped her the prior week and caused the failed homework assignment. Then, during this week, she worked with me (successfully), but at the end of the session made the remark about the failed homework and the lousy tutoring she had received. The key point here is that she addressed the remark to me – as generic tutor – rather than to me as a specific person. However, I did not realize that, and the student did not realize that she had, out of understandable anger, mis-assigned the blame to the nearest convenient tutor – me.
The key message here is that students sometimes use the word “you” when talking to a tutor, but actually mean it in the abstract plural sense; “you” may refer to some tutors, to all tutors, to the tutor last week, etc. So beware: if you get an isolated criticism, don’t feel too bad, and if you get an isolated accolade, don’t let it go to your head. When evaluating your own performance as a tutor, you must look for the overall trend in the comments that you receive. Any given individual comment may not really apply to “you” at all.
By the way, I still have that one terrible student evaluation of me as a tutor. I keep it as a reminder that I have to look for the trend in comments and not get tripped up by individual ones that don’t seem to make any sense when applied specifically to me.