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I tutored

974 Views 8 Replies 7 Participants Last post by  ott, 
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Today I tutored a class of about 40-50 2nd year university students for two hours. Not lecturing though, just helping individual students with questions while they were doing exercises, but that's plenty scary enough.

I've been worrying about this the whole week, and was more than a little nervous the hours before the session. When I got into the auditorium and saw all the people my hands even started to tremble, which doesn't happen to me very often. But as soon as I got started I somehow quickly calmed down, and I actually ended up having fun! The other tutors were friendly and the students asked easy questions, so it felt like I was actually being useful and not a complete moron.

I'm probably the only one who's going to enjoy these sessions (12 in total) as it's fairly boring work, but to me it's a big step, and proof to me that I've actually gotten better lately. A year ago I wouldn't even think the thought of doing something like this.

The professor wants two of us (there are eight tutors in this course) to do some lectures for the whole class as well, but there's no chance I'm going to volunteer for that. I sense it would do me more harm than good right now. Most of the other tutors said they wouldn't dare as well, which cleared my conscience a bit.
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sherbert said:
That's great, I'm sure you'll do fine on the next sessions. I would like to point out that you said, "so i didn't feel like i was a complete moron". Which, despite the fact you weren't serious says that you feel like a moron. I don't mean to "get fruedian",but be careful of negitive thoughts. Anxiety is the problem not stupidity. You're doing good though, keep it up
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Hmm, it sounded a lot better in my head. The point I was trying to make was that i didn't feel I looked like a complete moron, which is what I had feared to some extent (trembling, voice breaking up, being stumped by questions etc). But instead of negative thoughts getting reinforced it felt really good :) This is something we talked a lot about during the few CBT sessions i had, displacing negative thoughts with positive experiences. Taking this job is one of my attempts to do that on my own. I'm probably the only of the tutors who're not there for the money. Not entirely at least ;)
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Complications suddenly arises. :fall

ott said:
The professor wants two of us (there are eight tutors in this course) to do some lectures for the whole class as well, but there's no chance I'm going to volunteer for that. I sense it would do me more harm than good right now. Most of the other tutors said they wouldn't dare as well, which cleared my conscience a bit.
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It wasn't so positive that noone dared to do this after all. Only one volunteered, so it was decided that the other would be chosen through drawing straws.

Guess who "won".

I now have the fantastic choice of either doing this (essentially solving and explaining problems on the blackboard in front of a whole class for an hour every week), or explaining to the professor why this is not an ideal task for me. :afr
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