A day in the life of a tutor: Sunday, February 28, 2016

I'm tired. It's been a long day. Sundays have, for whatever reason (and there are good reasons), been the longest tutoring day for a while. But it occurred to me that what seems normal to me might be bizarre to others. So here's a look into a typical atypically busy day for me.

First: Why are Sundays busy? Students have homework due Monday, AND it's a weekend day (meaning I can schedule morning appointments), AND people usually don't go out Sunday nights. Many all-day sports events appear to be scheduled Saturday, and not Sunday, presumably to avoid conflict with religious services. Note: a few of the families I work with do attend regular religious services, and yet find time Sundays for tutoring.

Anyway, here's what happened today:

7:00 AM: Got up before my alarm. Been exercising and consuming lots of caffeine lately, which has translated into slightly shorter sleep cycles. Handling it well so far. Alarm was scheduled for 7:15, and I have a meeting at 7:30, so I grab a quick shower.

7:30 AM: Meeting over Skype with student based in Denmark. How did I end up with a student in Denmark? Had to do with going to Korea, and tutoring a student who then attended a school in Israel, who was friends with this guy, who then moved to Denmark. I'm world famous! Sort of. We work on a Theory of Knowledge paper concerning psuedoscience, in which I help the student break down some of the social/psychological reasons why psuedoscientific beliefs might persist. Meet for about an hour, which generates lots of notes shared in a Google Doc.

8:30 AM: clean dog shit and eat a banana, with handwashing somewhere inbetween. Spend a bit too much time browsing the Internet. Start drinking my day-old coffee.

9:15 AM: leave house

9:45 AM: Arrive in Rosemead, but starting to feel hungry. Rashly bolt into 7-11 and buy a hot dog. Actually two. Gross. Send a quick text to a parent who had wanted to schedule a meeting today. But I'm full up. Tell her that her son can ask me questions via text, and I'll reply when I can (probably not before 11pm).

10:00AM: Meet with 9th grade student. We start with geometric constructions. Although lacking in experience, I figure out how best to help her. We pivot to Othello, which we've been analyzing for the last several weeks. Many discussions about psychology, motivation, etc. Somehow she brings up Ke$ha, and I learn that she has accused her producer of rape. A short discussion about the difficulty of proving rape follows. Ordinarily I wouldn't have touched that topic with a ten-foot pole, especially with such a young female student. But we've gotten to know each other well enough that I thought she deserved honest answers. The second tutoring session I had ever with her, I was ambushed by questions about STDs for her health class. She asked me what oral sex was. So the high-water mark for awkwardness had already been reached. Two hours of analysis and frustrations with a compass, I leave. In months of tutoring, I've never formally met the dad, though he's usually in the other room, like The Wizard of Oz. Weird.

12:00PM: Start driving as quickly as I can to Fullerton. Scheduled to meet a student at 12:45, though he's asked for more time, presumably because matrices aren't going well.

12:55PM: Got there late thanks to horrendous parking near CSUF, but decided to get coffee before sitting down at the Panera. This is a relatively new student -- incredibly polite, but it perhaps feels like I don't know him particularly well. Sometimes that comes with time. Work on systems of equations, Gauss-Jordan elimination, and row-reduced echelon form. Second meeting covering matrices. Needed some clarification from last time about why we use a parameter, t, in cases of infinite solutions. Covered matrix multiplication and calculating determinants. Also covered inverses, but -- lucky guy! -- he apparently doesn't need to calculate the inverse of a 3x3 or larger matrix. Does have trouble setting up some of the word problems -- I did the best I could in our closing minutes to explain how to distinguish between the unknown variables and given quantities, but I suspect some follow-up will be necessary. One hour was all that was needed, so I'm back on schedule.

2:30 PM: Arrive at a student's house in Yorba Linda. Been meeting with this student for about two years. She's awesome -- very well-adjusted, despite the pressures of being in a lot of high-level classes and having successful parents. Definitely think she will go far. Math has been frustrating, and she had failed a test recently. We reviewed some differential equations and parametric/polar calculations of arc length, area, etc. She often is (mostly) mock-angry when I take her teacher's side about anal retentive notation.

 "I've decided to start trying."

"You've been trying. Last meeting went really well."

"Well, I decided to start trying this week."

"Oh." *flashback to the previous week of senioritis*

She is slightly distracted by her mom being on the phone. I provide a rationalization for the multitasking phone work. "You always cut her slack!" She's not the only one, kid.

I love this family. Leave at 3:30 for La Habra.

3:45 PM: Hunger strikes me like a lightning bolt strikes a solitary tree in a vast, forbidding prairie. I find a wrapped cookie in the back seat, originating from a gift from a kindly Australian doctor I drove around LA last week. It is dry and crumbly. But it stems the temptation to stop at another 7-11.

4:00 PM: Meeting with a junior boy, who may or may not play too much League of Legends. (Spoiler: probably too much) We work on a few calculus problems involving u-substitution. Until recently, we had focused only on physics, but I guess integrals have gotten a bit harder. It's still 70/30 physics/calc.

"You didn't need my help with these questions."

"Well... when I looked at them, they looked really hard. But now that we're doing them..."

"So you didn't attempt any of them before I showed up?"

He seemed a bit jokier. It had taken a couple months for him to relax a bit -- he still works like he's in a rush. One problem involving stretching a wire seemed particularly troublesome. He wanted to give up, but I made him stick with it. The appreciation at the end of the problem was palpable. (Not.) "I hate physics." Says the future engineer. After an hour, time to take a short detour for food.

5:15 PM: While ordering my shrimp burrito at Rubio's, I sigh and return the call of a mom that had called me a few hours ago. She wants to schedule an appointment tomorrow morning for her son to work on applications to summer science programs. Against my better judgment, I agree to a 9am meeting tomorrow. She wants to meet for four hours, but I explain that the writing process will probably require a 1-2 hour meeting, then a follow-up. Apps are due Thursday. Communications have been mildly problematic -- maybe it's culture, or the fact that my phone can't receive iMessages.

5:25 PM: Burrito is in my lap. I refrain from eating it while driving, as that's unsafe and extra gross. Experience(!) teaches me that these Ancho Citrus Shrimp Burritos tend to leak a bit. It rolls from lap to the floor at a stoplight, but remains intact (and delicious).

5:30 PM: Tutoring a sophomore who has already committed to University of Maryland: College Park on a softball scholarship. (!) She's that good. We work a bit on arithmetic and geometric sequences for Algebra 2, then pivot to chemistry and enthalpies of formation. I'm pretty bad at these. I have to Google some help, but we muddle through it to calculate the average bond energy of ozone. We close out the session by going over some of the PSAT 10 she's practiced. I notice energy level flagging for both of us, but we both perk up after a brief tangent about softball and how the smaller diamond makes play very, very different from baseball. It's fascinating stuff -- maybe I'll see if we can work some Algebra 2 into that. Problems on PSAT seem to focus on semicolon use (needs to separate independent clauses) and not checking that a sentence added at a particular location is related to the content immediately before and after that sentence. She may pick sentences that seem to match the overall passage, with little regard to context.

I started tutoring her older sister about three years ago. The sister has graduated. I probably should've raised rates a while ago -- they are grandfathered in at about 2/3 my current rate -- but I'm grateful to them for providing a review from a parent with a daughter. I suspect that parents felt more comfortable with me tutoring their daughters after that review posted.

A nice family even if they care way more about sports than I do. Leave at 6:45.

6:45 PM: Reply to some texts. Had to remind a student why an integral involving a ln x and having one limit at x=0 is an improper integral and needs to be handled using limits. Head to La Palma.

7:15 PM: End up in terrible traffic at the Valley View offramp of the 91. See a crane truck leave the scene, and then see the car upside down. At least 3 cars involved, with lots of ambulances and fire trucks. Memento mori. Drive onward, with Muse playing (instead of NPR, today's a sort of day to listen to the limited number of songs I have on my phone -- mostly Muse, Two Steps From Hell, and some scattered songs: "Jar of Hearts", "Confident", "Pruit Igoe", "Prelude to War", "Counting Stars", and "Crazy", to name a few.)

7:30 PM: Arrive and start tutoring separable differential equations. My student owns an adorable dachshund that always smells like piss, but is really cute. Named Snoopy. Love how much noise his ears make when he shakes his head. Anyway, student appears to need some supplemental work on limits, as she is having trouble with end behavior. Make a note to send her a worksheet. I can feel my fatigue based crabiness set in, so I try to lighten the mood a bit by mentioning that I had heard about a group that performs synchronized swimming at high end parties. (My student is really serious about synchronized swimming.) She knows the group, and says that within the synchronized swimming community, they have a bad reputation.

Despite playing water polo and doing competitive synchronized swimming, she's very shy. Hope she gains confidence to speak up a bit more on the academic side. Leave after an hour to Diamond Bar, and send off a text informing them that I'll be about 10 minutes late.

9:10 PM: I show up ten minutes late, but managed to reschedule someone for tomorrow after parking. Evidently someone made use of the Google calendar I had set up.

It's been a few weeks since I had met with this student -- the last meeting ended in tears for the student, as his bottled up fear and anxiety came to the fore. It's kind of an awkward meeting -- how could it not be? But we don't touch the elephant in the room, although I did notice that when I asked the mom "How are you?" she replied, "He's fine."

We work on Ampere's Law and Biot-Savart. It's a shame that the most technically demanding work is coming at the end of the day, but I'm able to help him figure out why we use cosine instead of sine to find the vertical B-component (had to do with the angle labeled), and why we express it as R/r (because we use similar triangles to get a value for the cosine of that angle). Fielded some additional questions regarding current density and when to use straight/circular Amperean loops.

Thankfully, the meeting is an hour, and not the two I had prepared for. I suspect we'll have to talk again, about physics and other stuff. He's smart, but he feels he so far behind. I need to think about how to help him see that it's not a race.

10:30 PM: get home, then start working on a problem texted to me. Evidently the student dropped a 2, again, in a polar integral. Surprise! That's why the numbers are off. I eat leftovers, watch a few minutes of Kimmel (enough to TOTALLY call that Matt Damon was hiding in Ben Affleck's suit), and then head to my room. Early morning tutoring, and I have a blog post to write. Not going to have energy to submit any summaries or billing through WyzAnt tonight.

It was a long, long day. But I laughed a lot. I genuinely enjoyed most of it. I know it's unsustainable -- even if I don't work nearly this hard any other day of the week. But it was a good day.

Astropolitika

I was having a serious life conversation with a student in crisis. We discussed many things, most of which I can't share. Too personal, too raw. But I did relate one story, one thing that, at the time, seemed relevant. It's not very personal, and was probably the most boring thing I had to say to him that meeting. But it's part of me that I want to write down, because it's a small piece of history that may matter to me more as I grow older.

When I was a junior in college, I took a History of the Soviet Empire class, taught by a German with the surname O'Donoghue. Despite the confusion inherent in that, it was a very enjoyable class.

We got to choose our research topics, and for whatever reason I chose the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921. I can't remember much from the paper; I did pull an all-nighter for it, but I definitely put some work into it. The tumultuous years of a Trotskeyite Soviet Empire, the Miracle on the Vistula, the heroic/despotic arc of Pilsudskii -- it was very compelling.

Senior year, I ran into an astronomer from Poland at the American Astronomical Society meeting in San Diego. I happened to mention that I had had the opportunity to study a bit of Polish history.

He would've been within his rights to dismiss me, politely or not, for presumption. But instead, we chatted a bit. Not surprisingly, the "Miracle on the Vistula", the triumphant defeat of Soviet forces at the gates of Warsaw by the Polish army, was suppressed knowledge under Communism. But he had heard stories and whispers growing up. The story was a source of pride and inspiration to those growing up under Communism.

It was a nice moment, one in which, for a moment, we were separated from the bubble of theoretical considerations. But perhaps it's not surprising, or even uncommon. Astronomers, when they look into the sky, are always looking into the past.

I hope my student knows that these scientists are not gods. They are women and men, flesh and blood, with their own histories and dark chapters. Gods are meant to be feared and worshiped. But people, ordinary people doing extraordinary things, they are meant to be held, and loved, and encouraged.

I hope this young man realizes that he belongs in science, if he chooses a home there... not in spite of his vulnerabilities, but because of them.

The Young Boy

Once upon a time, there was a young boy. He wanted to be good, and did his best to cultivate virtue. He was taught not to brag, to be humble even about what were honorable accomplishments. He was also taught that his quality would be recognized in time, and that it was better to be silent as to questions of desire and ambition.

That boy grew up, and experienced his share of praise. But he craved more. He worked and labored to distinguish himself, within the constraints that had become internal commandments.

The boy, now a man, waited. And as he grew older, he grew more stressed, more anguished, even embittered. He questioned why he did good, and did so silently. Why, he asked, did he do whet he thought were right and virtuous things, and not achieve any satisfaction from them?

And so he grew older, and more bitter.

Finally, in his exasperation, he began to praise himself, to tell of his brilliance, his thoughtfulness, his kindness to others. And the others initially praised him, but soon shunned him, leaving him to be self-rightrous and self-centered by himself.

At the end of his life, he cried out to the Heavens and asked, "Why am I so wretched? What did I do wrong?"

Heaven was silent. But his friend, his sole remaining friend, replied.

"You tried to cultivate virtue in isolation. But that is meaningless. For the one virtue you lsckrd, courage, comes from the constant interaction between you and the outside world. You neither loved much, nor laughed much, nor fought much. You wept much, but only for yourself. Without courage, all your gifts withered and were corrupted."

The old man wept.

"But," the friend continued, "there is one bit of good news."

"What is it?" the old man sniffles.

"You will die only as much as anyone else, no more, and no less."

A week to miss astronomy

Tomorrow morning, I will tutor a Science Olympiad student on astronomy. The topics this year are stellar evolution and exoplants. 

It hits a bit close to home, as these were two topics I had spent most of my undergraduate and graduate studies contemplating (when I was actually contemplating astronomy). It should be relatively easy to coach the student on the quantitative aspects; she had already taken an intro astronomy class at Fullerton College, but didn't learn some of the equations required of her. Though much is taken, much abides.

I had forgotten that there is something attractive about being able, with relatively simple models, to characterize in broad strokes the habitability of a world, the warmth of a star, the importance of just the right amount of greenhouse gases. 

Time and Death and God 

Perhaps not quite. But death, and rebirth. The precious origins of metal. The cutoffs determining the fate of stars -- just numbers, but each painstakingly determined by the collision of theory and data. Lies, partially. Simplifications -- that's a better way of putting it.

In a minute there is time:

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

Maybe, maybe, with a bit more math, or even just qualitatively, how to estimate mass limits using the wobble of stars. Maybe direct detection. Maybe gravitational lensing -- GR, which has stormed into the headlines, those waves just a tad late to the 100th anniversary party. And whispers of reflected spectra, and now hushed whispers of an oxygen detection, something that will dwarf even gravitational waves, perhaps not scientifically, but philosophically. Why else look for these other worlds? Why else hunt for a Second Earth? We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring will be

To arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

There will be no time, perhaps, to delve into the social history -- the female "computers" that gave us stellar classification, the racism and colonialism and amateurish arrogance that perhaps led to the dismissal of Chandrasekhar, the resignations and scandals. The funding fights. How so many NASA sites ended up in regions of the country that seem, now, to hate the agency so much.

No time for remorse, to miss the learning, even as I know I do not miss the work, or the life, that in spite it all, I am free to not care.

For thine is

I celebrate you friends who stayed, and thrived. It has been a good week for astronomy. It has even been a good week to miss it.

Again, the Cousin's whistle! Go, my Love.