There seem to be two specific ways to be the tute partner from hell. Simply put, you can be very, very good or very, very bad, and I would imagine most people have had their fair share of both.
Take the good kind to start with. This is the sort of person who gets out next week’s books this week, frets if they haven’t read every single thing on the reading list, including supplementary material, the stuff tutors have a tendency to label as “for background”. What’s more, they’ve usually done next week’s reading this week, and if there is, as there so often is, only one copy of a given book floating around Oxford, they’ll have it. And they’re not letting it go, so don’t even think about it. Go and hide in a corner of Blackwell’s like the other plebs.
So, after a week of aggravation, you present yourself at your tutorial having quite possibly had no sleep for two days, with your hastily-researched handful of paper that barely qualifies as an essay, but is nevertheless, you are pleased to note, in continuous prose and maybe even almost, if you squint, two thousand words long. You run in all of a tizzy, sit down, run a hand through your hair, blink hard a couple of times and try to look intelligent. So far, so good.
Now here comes your tute partner. Bright, breezy, immaculately attired, folder held carefully in perfectly manicured hands, they sit and read out their perfect, publishable essay, addressing every relevant point and argument in liquid-smooth lexis. And when they’ve finished, they sit back, smile beatifically and say, “Oh, I’m sorry it’s not quite up to scratch, I had a lot on this week.”
The tutor effuses. You lean back in the squashy armchair, have a serious think about your intellectual credentials and hope for the cushions to swallow you whole.
Whether or not this is preferable to the other sort of hellish tute partner is a matter up for debate. This is the type who rings up six hours before the tute, whether or not it’s four am, to demand books, because “I just haven’t had time.” They get extra points for thinking this explanation is somehow hilarious, or for smelling – yes, even down the phone – noticeably of alcohol. Whereas you have, at least, tried to make a start more than a day before the deadline, and so arrive in the tutorial equipped with some sketchy things to say and a contingency bullshit plan if the tutor is less than impressed, your partner flumps into a chair, twenty minutes later, and proceeds to sleep for the next three quarters of an hour. You’re left to hold up the discussion by yourself, subtly nudging your partner with your foot to no avail; he or she snores happily on while you rapidly run out of things to say. For that truly hellish touch, though, it’s best if your partner then wakes up all at once five minutes before the end, delivers a grin all round, and says brightly, “That was good, wasn’t it?” before disappearing in the direction of the pub.
This isn’t, of course, an exhaustive assessment. Honourable mentions remain for several other breeds. Take the tute partner who writes essays that are variations on good, bad, or mediocre, but never less than four thousand words long, so by the time they’ve finished reading you’ve long since forgotten the topic, anything you were going to say about it and indeed, most of the twenty-first century.
Then there’s the ones who, for whatever reason, don’t believe in checking their email, or worse, in talking at all. On the other side of that coin, there’s the tute partner who’s so breathlessly enthusiastic, and so very keen to talk about everything that they’ve ever read, that you don’t get a word in edgeways, and are reduced to hoping they’ll eventually stop through lack of oxygen and you can say what you wanted to say while they’re gasping like a codfish on the floor. Anecdotally, this problem seems to arise for women in male-dominated subjects
In conclusion, there are as many levels of hell as would keep Dante happy, and each has its own exquisite tortures. Which is not to say this is not all very melodramatic and Oxford is not stuffed full of nice, considerate, intellectually sane people who are a pleasure to be in tutorials with. If you have such a partner, go and buy them a drink. And if not, well. Get one for yourself. You deserve it.
How to be the tute partner from hell
