University, eh? I never went to school, probably why I still work as a deli clerk.
Are you still stuck on the repeating text part? I made a BufferedKeyboard class that basically keeps a list of bools that independently keep track of timing, where each bool represents one key. If you want to go down the easier route, you should definitely look into using MonoGame’s Window.TextInput EventHandler. If you get too crazy parsing input it might get a little too ambitious for a school project.
This event handler will handle timing for you, so no repeating values. The downside is that certain keys are not kept track of correctly, should you just add chars to the end of your string, and you will need to account for them manually.