Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Tutoring

If you are ever in the third floor of the library around noon, you probably have seen me tutoring people. I'm not doing it out of the kindness of my heart, I get paid by SUU to do it and I have one student right now who may in fact be retarded.

Now I tutored this person last semester, and she was still just as retarded. At the end of the semester I thought I was home free, no luck. She specifically requested me to tutor her again this semester. My only question was...why? Why was I the unlucky one and how could I get out of this? I started thinking of excuses, I'm going to be in the hospital on the days she needed tutoring? I was getting married? I'm allergic to idiots? Nothing seemed believable. Now before I continue I just need to paint a picture of this person: She is a dance major, is maybe a 5 out of 10 on the hotness scale, (but thinks she's like a 12) and always tries to find out if I'm dating someone or not. All I ever wanna say is "Really? Do you honestly think I want to share all of my personal life with someone I see for 3 hours a week?"

This person, (we will call her lisa) has an IQ of somewhere between a house plant and a rock. Lisa is figuring out ratios right now. For example: "if I pay 6 dollars for 12 muffins, how much does each muffin cost?" This is a direct quote from their book so you can see how retarded this math is to begin with. How she made it past high school with this incompetency in math will forever be a mystery. Now Lisa could not figure out how much each muffin cost. So I tried to simplify it, the following conversation ensued:

Me: "if you pay 6 dollars for 6 muffins, how much does each muffin cost?"
Lisa: "1 dollar each."
Me: Good, now try the original problem
Lisa: What original problem?
Me: The one in your book
Lisa: Which one?
Me: (pointing to the problem) the one you JUST read
Lisa: Oh, I thought you were talking about something else.
Me: That's ok, just try to figure it out just like before.
Lisa: But it's hard, and I don't like story problems, could you just do it for me? (in the girly, try to get someone to do something for you voice)
Me: Not a chance.
Lisa: Ok, 6 dollars...12 muffins...2 dollars a muffin?
Me: close, but no, you have your method backwards
Lisa: Ok (smiling) 6 dollars...12 muffins...4 dollars a muffin?

To cut the story short...she couldn't get it. So I tried explaining it another way. Still couldn't get it. Now if you are familiar with the 3rd floor you know that people can hear you from any part of the floor if you talk in a normal voice. Well people were starting to snicker, I was starting to get frustrated, and Lisa thought this was the funniest thing ever. I ended up just skipping the problem, told her to ask her teacher and packed up my things.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy helping people, but just as a final way to show you my extreme distaste in tutoring this girl...I would rather listen to Lady Gaga's "Alejandro" for 24 straight hours or hang out with this guy in the woods for a week than tutor this girl.

2 comments:

  1. wait, 12 divided by six? or is the ratio 1:2? was this an odd numbered problem?

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  2. David, you should be her tutor, then I think she would get it right.

    ReplyDelete