Fall semester just started, and I began teaching my freshman class their first college-level English course: English Composition 101. One of their first assignments was to write an introduction letter about themselves and their experience with reading and writing. As I graded them, I was reminded of life as a new adult. Some of their worries were about tuition, nervousness about a new language and place (specifically for my foreign students), and an overall blasé attitude toward reading and writing.

I did my best to inform them about resources or clubs on campus. I did my best to connect them with resources on campus, whether it was encouraging the young lady who likes to sing to join the university choir or recommending Coffee with a Counselor to the young man grieving the loss of his brother. If I remember my own journey as a college student, I mostly stayed to myself unless a professor assigned group projects, so I encouraged them to connect with one another and with the spirit of the campus.

I work at a Catholic university, and one of the first things that I noticed walking around campus was a flag that said, “Faith Over Fear.” Not to mention, every hour I hear the church bell ring, and I am reminded of the Holy Spirit working on campus. I do my best to make my students feel welcome, to be understanding, and to make my class an enjoyable space even before I talk about composition or the syllabus.

I’m aware that ChatGPT can easily be the answer for students who want to skip the effort of learning to write. I tell them that I’d rather have a paper that is authentic and full of mistakes than a perfect paper written by AI. I get excited when I find their voice in their paper. It’s that raw writing that is most memorable to me. When I see the spelling errors, the misused words, I am happy to see that the writing is human, that it comes from a college freshman.

One student wrote in his personal letter that he didn’t even know who he was, that he was learning, and that all he could say was that he was a better person than he was before. That became my new vision for my English class: to be an exploration of self, a series of rough drafts that become better than before.

Those days when teachers bled all over a paper with red marking pens are gone. English educator best practices are taught to sandwich comments: one good, one “bad,” and one good. My critique group experience was more like an all-bad sandwich. It was my first time at a critique session, and I had a lot of follow-up questions about my critique. The writer, a published author, became angry with me and accused me of being selfish and hijacking the group’s time. I never returned to that writer’s group again.

Mentorship should not become a place where we crucify someone’s rough draft or make someone feel bad. We should be inspired and honored to be in this type of relationship. Back then, it was common to have a master and apprentice relationship, to have a guru or sage guiding us.

How many books in history are there between a mentor and an apprentice? I remember reading Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke and The Prophet by Khalil Gibran. These books gave me the gentle wisdom I needed to lift my spirit.

Today, most people are turning to AI for a feel-good high. It is programmed to tell us what we want to hear. AI should not be a replacement for a real-life mentor. It is good to be challenged, to be told hard truths, and even to be called out, but those things should be done with compassion and by someone who has taken the time to develop a trusting, respectful, and safe relationship.

Writing, especially, is such a vulnerable process with many traumas. I’m sure each writer has their horror story of a teacher who crushed their writing (or literally crumpled their essay and threw it in the trash, like what happened to me) or an editor or mentor writer who broke them instead of encouraged them.

I may not speak like a poet or prophet in my freshman composition class, but I do hope they feel a relationship that is more mentor over professor, more faith over fear, more rough draft than polished copy.

copyright 2026 Janet Tamez