Tutoring Madness

Despite finals dawning upon me, I still really enjoy tutoring during this busy time. Not just for the money, but for the passion. I love to teach, especially something that makes me feel smart when I talk about it. I can see myself probably teaching my area of expertise in the future as a physician and being tied to the school. I love making really difficult concepts into extremely simple things that anyone can understand. A lot of the lectures we had this term could have been taught a lot differently to make learning easier. There's no point to teaching something in a confusing manner and then expecting students to figure out problems on their own. If you can't get the message across clearly and succintly, there's no use for that knowledge. Learning is about efficiency and time as much as it is about struggling and mastering a concept. And a lot of profs don't get that.

I can say that I was inspired to tutor by a great physics 101 T.A. that ran my tutorial in first year. You can tell that he was a very intelligent person by his demeanour when he was trying to solve a practice problem or explain something to you. He was a very busy graduate student himself, but he even took the time out of his busy schedule to help me in 2nd term with some confusing concepts in circutry and capacitance (at least it was confusing to me) before a midterm. I absoluetly admired the intensity and enthusiasm I could see in his eyes and the way he spoke, always with a sense of urgency and attack. I realized, that's the exact attitude you need to embody to be successful at learning information and teaching it as well. I've always tried to take the best I see in others and try to acquire for myself a greater skill. And I think that I have definitely taken a page or two from Justin, my old physics T.A. I'll never lose that.