College composition instructors may instead see many more students who fit into categories of Received Knowers or Subjective Knowers. Received Knowers tend to listen and conceive of themselves as learners but do not feel capable of contradicting or challenging the authority of others. Received Knowers tend to be the polite students who expect, in Freirean terms, to have knowledge deposited by their teachers into their brain-banks. When faced with instructions or tasks they do not understand, Received Knowers may wait passively for the teacher’s additional instructions. For educators, Received Knowers can make teaching first-year composition frustrating because it appears they want the teachers to do all the thinking for them. Subjective Knowers tend to be so reactive to perceived challenges or threats to their fragile, emerging selves that they sever relations rather than risk abdicating (their perception) strong convictions. Subjective Knowers can be frustrating for teachers because of the Subjective Knowers’ need to be in control of their own learning. As a result, they may challenge everything teachers present. Or, if they do not understand an assignment, they may be so invested in their understanding that they proceed without clarification because they cannot risk being wrong…even to the extent of ignoring teacher feedback. Or, this need for control may manifest itself in the Subjective Knowers’ insistence (more through attitude than language) that teachers “Prove this activity will benefit me before I decide which parts I will do.” Women in the Center creative writing classes appeared to vacillate between the classifications of Received Knower and Subjective Knower…and I argue that first-year composition students share many of the same characteristics and present some of the same challenges to teachers.