Motivation

To try and earn some money to fund my life, I'm trying to spend a little bit of time tutoring chemistry. I put my details on a tutoring website, and had my first student called M------- today.

I was a bit annoyed as M------- is extremely disorganised. For example, I rang her a week ago asking her to ring me back to confirm a lesson after talking to her parents. I ended up having to ring her the day before the lesson was due to take place (multiple times) trying to get it confirmed.

I turned up after travelling for over an hour to get there, only to find that she hadn't discussed details with her parents till that day. I arrive at her flat, which was squalid, and smelt appalling (seriously ~R, if you think I'm bad, you haven't seen anything - think something off Kim and Aggie). There were three youngish sons from about 6-14 who were running amok (but seemed like really lovely kids).

I met M-------'s father, Thomas, who wanted to talk to me about how we were going to do the lessons and everything like that. I don't mind that, and I normally allow time for that, but it took a lot longer than I wanted. In addition, apparently, M------- hadn't told him my rates before he said it was ok, and he said he can't afford them (having seen their living conditions, I'm not surprised and it wasn't just a bargaining tactic). I agreed to take her for the reduced rate, but we were going to meet somewhere more convenient for me in future. I found it was an example of low socioeconomic background forming a barrier for education, so I thought I'd do my bit to help someone poorer try and improve themselves. To be honest, I wasn't a big fan of the father, but the kids were really nice. The sons were clearly crying out for attention, and were trying to impress me - I really think the parenting could do with a lot of work: Dad needs to spend more time with kids without piling on the pressure (I could see him being classic pushy parent with M-------).

I thought after coming all this way, I would do the lesson (otherwise the morning would have been a complete write off), despite the fact that it would make me miss gymnastics. I told them that we couldn't do the lesson in their home (it was far too chaotic and messy and loud with the kids - not their fault, just not amenable to work). So we went to their "local" library - which ended up being quite a long walk away.

I spoke to M------- on the walk down, and my instincts about pushy parenting were confirmed. I asked the questions that I couldn't ask in front of her dad, finding out how big the task in front of us was. My fears were confirmed - her dad didn't realise how bad her results were and how much of a struggle trying to improve them would be. I also found out her motivation for tutoring, as she also genuinely wanted to learn. She realised that if she gets high enough results to go to university she'll have a chance for freedom and space. Sadly due to pushy parenting (dad wanted her to be a doctor) she's chosen a very optimistic course - pharmacy at Manchester - requiring a B. As someone who scored so low in her AS chemistry that her school won't let her take A2 chemistry (so she's doing it from learning with me and self-teaching), I really think that it's slightly mission impossible.

This was only confirmed to me when I actually took her for the lesson. Her skills were appallingly bad. She struggled to balance chemical equations - a skill that I thought was required for GCSE chemistry - let alone A level. I took her through a discussion of enthalpy changes.

In the end I gave about 3 hours to M------- and her dad for 80% of the money that we agreed on for one hour. (Including the travel time and expenses, I took significantly less than minimum wage for this). I've taken on a pretty much impossible mission that I am likely to fail on. I'd really like to see her do well though.

An interesting thing struck me when I was trying to motivate her, and also discuss her study habits. I told her that she had a big task ahead of her, and she would have to work really hard to have even a chance of achieving her goal. She'd have to make sacrifices and start being pro-active with her learning - I asked her to take time to work without distractions, to answer questions and read over her notes. But the rewards were good and were clearly something that she wants.

I realised a lot of this applies to me in my learning. I'm not working hard enough, and I'm not working smart enough. I need to test myself more by answering questions. I need to work without music and without flicking to websites or distracting myself with comic books. When I work - I need to work hard. That will give me enough time to play and be with ~R, my favourite thing in the world.

And the possible rewards for me are great too. I can be a doctor, but not only that - if I work hard enough, I can help ~R too. I know she struggles sometimes, not because she's not smart enough (I think she's actually smarter than I am), just because she's never learned how to apply her cleverness to learning. So if I can find ways to make things she struggles with easy to learn and interesting, it would make me really happy. I love her so much, and would love to feel that I have stuff to offer her. She makes me so incredibly happy, and she says I make her happy. I just want to be good enough, so that she never turns round and thinks I'm not good enough for her and we need to part our ways. I love her and want her for as long as I can have her.

This is an unbelievably over-long and rambling post, so I'm going to stop there.

AcidCat