Losing a tutor: A harrowing experience

Ah tutors. Crafty little things, they are. They set you work, talk at you for hours on subjects you’re not really sure you enjoy anymore and occasionally, write a book or two that actually come into use. They’re a strange bunch. But other than strange and sometimes irritating, they’re also beneficial.

Think about your personal tutor. When was the last time you went to see them? I bet you can’t remember. It’s okay, most people are in the same boat. But when it comes to the crunch – for me that’s about now – personal tutors are really, very helpful.

I say this like it’s new information. Until 13 December 2013, I had been visiting my personal tutor twice a week. On that fateful day, I arrived at his office door with a thank you card. He had announced to me some weeks before that this term would be his final one before going on research leave. I had stuck my head in the sand and pretended it wasn’t happening. "La la la, don’t say silly things," I had said (in a few more words). Privately I was outraged. How could he do that to me? We’d been firm friends for three years (by friends I mean that I’d pecked his head in twice a week about inconsequential details until time was up). He had watched my academic pendulum swing back and forth: I love it, I hate it, I love it, ad nauseam.

I went in for our final meeting, gave him his card and left with the wish that he should continue to read my column (he’d probably be up for a mention soon).

After Christmas, reconvening with the English troops outside a lecture hall, I overheard a friend mourning her recent loss. Not of a pet or family member, but her personal tutor. He’d left too! It turned out that five senior members of Queen Mary’s English department had gone on research leave at Christmas, with their final year students floundering somewhat, left in the lurch. Without exception, these are all cherished, brilliant academics, those we’d pop in and meet for half an hour to discuss the previous week's (puzzling) class.

Of the English students I sampled for research, half had close-knit relationships with their tutors, those that had left. Yet we all feel short-changed. Not because these great academics shouldn’t be allowed to write books and languish in the British Library, leaving their college offices empty and cold, but because after three years of tutoring, in the final stretch of our degrees, it is now that we need them most. I’ve been offered another member of staff – the very one that interviewed me for my place, a Medievalist to whom I mistakenly told, aged eighteen, I did not like pre-Shakespearean literature. The connection just isn’t the same, and time cannot allow it to blossom.

So this is a plea to all university faculties: change personal tutors around every year. Do not allow finalists to suffer the loss of a tutor after three happy years. It’s cruel, really. Have a little humanity, folks.