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

Catching up

I realise I haven't put up a blog post for ages - last post was end of May, so I've gone the whole of June and most of July without updating. As a result, I'm just going to briefly list some of the salient points of the past two months so I feel like I've caught up. If I don't at least mention them here it will feel like I've got an itch that I can't quite scratch.

The main reason I haven't posted for most of this time is due to exam panic. I had a lot of exams around the beginning of July, so I spent a lot of time revising and panicking. I had an entire term's worth of work, which incidentally was the most difficult term of work so far (two modules, one on the musculoskeletal system (and skin) and one on neuroscience and psychiatry), so there was a lot of anatomy to learn. In addition I had a practical exam (OSCE) which tested any of the clinical procedures that we had learnt over the past year. As I only just scraped past the practice OSCE earlier this year, I was terrified. In the event I managed to pass all those exams acceptably well, so will be returning to university next year.

The other central part of my life recently has been the wonderful ~R. I've been spending a lot of time with her and think things have been going well. I'm very much in love with her and she makes me so very happy. I love being with her and having her near me. My addiction to her made it harder for me to concentrate on work, as my mind keeps drifting back to her. I'm really pleased that she too has passed her exams so will be coming back next year. However, she's away in America doing a project with her friend for the whole summer and I miss her lots. She won't be back until the holiday is over. I must admit I'm a bit scared that like my ex-, she'll come back and end the relationship. I really hope not. She's been gone less than a week (since Monday), but it feels like an age already.

Other things:
Well, my sister has moved into a new house that she has bought and it's really pretty. I'm looking forwards to the day I can afford my own house!

I've got a new house for next year, having moved out of student halls. I've moved in with three of my flatmates from this year and we have a little house just minutes from the hospital. It's quite nice, moving was a pain though and the kitchen is ant infested, the bathroom is crap, and the furniture is broken. My room itself is reasonably nice, having come second out of the hat when we were assigning rooms.

I'm off to Asia for two weeks with two of my flatmates at the end of August, just before term starts. One of them (J--) lives in Brunei, and offered to show us around, so myself and L--- are going to visit him. J-- has helped us organise going to Malaysia and Thailand as well, it's going to be amazing and I can't wait, but there's still a lot of organisation to do.

Until then, I've got a little job in the dissecting room. It involves removing all the soft tissue from the arm (below the shoulder blade), leaving only the bones and ligaments (and those muscles that prevent the top of the arm (humerus) falling out of the shoulder blade cup (glenoid fossa)). It pays minimum wage, but it's quite fun, and I'm learning anatomy as I go. There's also some other nice people doing it, so it's quite a fun experience.

Anyway, I'm getting tired, so I'm going to end this update here. If I can I'd like to keep going and maybe go into a bit more detail, but this will do for this post.

Goodnight everyone!

love
AcidCat

Snow willpower

Work life balance needs a little bit of work...

This weekend I've had too much life, and too little work. Fun, yes, but not right.

This evening I should have been more focussed.

To be fair though, it snowed! Enough to snowball fight and snowman... I wasn't sure if it would still be there tomorrow, so I went to frolic out in the snow. It was really enjoyable but it did mean I'm up at 2 am having done my work to a standard which is ok, but not as well as I would like.

Ah well, tomorrow is a new day!

AcidCat