School is in Session

Today, I find myself amongst more “normal students”. By normal students, I mean that not all of them are athletes. Some are probably in the band, some could be in ROTC, some could be involved in a fraternity or sorority, or some may have jobs as well as going to school. I am in the math tutoring room, where students on campus come to get help with whatever math they are struggling with. I have never been here before, but I can tell that it is a popular resource. The room is packed with all kinds of students. There are students working on computers, students working with teachers, students working with other students, and students working with the hired helpers. I sit in a chair in the back where I can observe everyone. I notice one girl who is sitting by herself at the “Calculus” table and from first glance, she appears to be very stressed. She is sitting over her paper, quickly writing down numbers with an intense look of concentration on her face. After a few seconds of furious scribbling, she throws her pencil down and starts punching numbers into her calculator. She must have got the answer wrong, because she put the calculator down, and immediately called over a tutor to help her. The first tutor to see her hand go up was a short male, with glasses, and a clean haircut. He was wearing basketball shorts, and a t-shirt that said “Stanford” on the front. He was a quirky looking kid, and he smiled with an easy demeanor as he walked over to the girl.

“Hi, I was wondering if you could help me with this problem on logarithms?” Said the girl in a frustrated tone.

“Yeah, let’s see what we’ve got here, my name is Joey.” said the tutor.

And with that, Joey sat down next to the girl, and he picked up her paper. He read the problem out loud and I could tell he understood the question right away.

“Oh, this is simple. Do you let me write down some formulas for you that you should memorize because it will help you with the test.” Joey said in a pleased voice. He wrote down a few formulas on a scratch piece of paper that he found in the middle of the table, and solved the problem within minutes, all while explaining it out loud. The girl looked extremely relieved and grateful. Joey and the girl worked for about twenty more minutes on her math homework and they appeared to get a lot of work done. The room as a whole seemed productive, and the helpers were constantly walking around working with people.

I noticed that Joey was constantly being called for by everyone, and almost always was able to find the answer and explain the concept. From this, I gathered that he was one of the more popular tutors there.