The following story encapsulates some of the difficult times experienced by this same environmental science student during her journey. It also tells how the student’s being a dancer and performer provided a medium to work through those challenges.
A chance encounter outside the Aboriginal Education Centre produced the follow- ing exchange:
Russell: How’s it going?
Student: All right.
R: What are you working on?
S: An essay for environmental studies.
R: When’s it due?
R: Where are you up to?
S: I’ve completed it.
R: Where is it?
S: It’s in my bag.
R: Can I have a look?
S: Yeah.
R: Bring it down to my office and I’ll have a look now if that’s ok?
S: When I’ve finished me smoke.
Shortly afterwards, the student arrived with essay in hand. R: Have you shown this to anyone else?
S: What do you mean?
R: Have you run it past your tutor or lecturer, you know the people who are going to mark it so that you can check whether you have covered what they want and put in a form they require?
S: No way.
R: Well, that is what consultation times are for, to get feed back so that you can redraft and submit before it is marked.
S: No way! I‘m not going to do that!
R: Why not?
S: Because I don’t want to look like an idiot! If it is not up to scratch, I will find out when I get it back. It’ll either pass or fail. And I am not going to be humiliated by the tutor or the lecturer. I am not going to feel or look like an idiot as they tell me my draft is no good and then tell me the final is no good. I would rather just hand it in. It either passes or fails.
At this point, Russell pushes none too politely past the student and yells down the hall to the Student Counsellor located three doors away:
R: Hey Fred, have you got the Anti-Idiot Spray there?
Fred: (from inside his office) How much do you need?
R: I’m going to need a carton of the bloody stuff because we have a major case here. Have you got a minute?
The student was leaning against the doorframe and looking for escape from the “hallway theatre” into which she was being thrust; however, there was no escape because both facilitator and counsellor were blocking her retreat.
F: What’s happening?
R: She has done the essay and doesn’t want to show it to the tutor or lecturer before she submits. She’s frightened if it’s not up to scratch, she’ll look like an idiot! She reckons she’d be better off submitting without feedback and redrafting.
F: Yeah, she needs the spray bad.
R&F (in unison): Getting feedback and using it to redraft your final submission is what
S: I’m tired of doing drafts and getting feedback. I just want to write the bloody thing and put it in. It shits me that I can’t just write the bloody thing straight off!
R: Welcome to the world of writing. It takes time to draft and redraft, and as you know it takes arse glue and a fist to write. That is all that is required, arse glue and a fist. You glue your arse in the seat, produce a draft, use your fist to knock on doors of people who know what is required, get their feedback, and then rework and submit. It’s better to appear like an idiot at draft time than to prove you are one when you get a fail because you didn’t follow the pattern that has proved successful for you.
S: Yeah (with great resignation).
R: So who is the tutor?
S: Greg.
R: Do you get on all right with Greg?
S: Yeah he’s good.
R: So use my phone and set up an appointment.
S: Ok.
The student then phoned to arrange an appointment, went and met with the tutor, redrafted and submitted her assignment (and subsequently passed).
R: Just prior to her graduation and taking up employment in the environmental science field the student shared that her strongest memory was of the two of us walking down to the Faculty Office, me standing at the end of the hall way blocking her escape as she proceeded to the tutor’s door, made a fist, knocked and asked the discipline’s ‘more expert other’ for help and using it to redraft and submit — and the Anti-Idiot Spray continued working through the rest of her degree.
Telephone conversations with the student after she took up employment have also revealed she continues to utilise more expert others as she continues her learning journeys through her professional life.