At this point in my life I am, among other things, a tutor, and I find this extremely rewarding in ways I hadn't anticipated. Truth be told, I pursued this mainly because I had the expectation of leveraging my intelligence and ability to do well on standardized tests into a vocation where I could make good money tutoring aspiring college students from the comfort of my home and continue the type of lifestyle I sought when I pseudo-retired almost twenty years ago.
Even though I was hired by a local tutoring firm for the purpose of doing ACT/SAT test prep, I wasn't assigned any students and it wasn't discovered until after some turnover in the office staff a few years later that someone in the office had marked my file as not being eligible to do test prep and as a consequence I had been assigned to work with younger students. Apparently, I did some good, recently a student I worked with four years ago (who I did not remember) requested me specifically when he returned for the purpose of test preparation, and again, truth be told, that was during my first year there and I was just going through the motions, thinking I was just putting in time until I could claim at least three years experience doing test prep and start making double to triple what I was making then.
My perspective began to change when I was assigned to work with a ten year old who was mainly interested in playing Fortnite all day and believed he could eventually make a living monetizing videos he posted on Youtube because that was what his eighteen year old brother was doing (and still living at home) and he wouldn't even have to move out of the house. His approach to the center assignments was lackadaisical until I was able to determine that his goal was to complete assignments as quickly as possible to have tangible proof that he was making progress to appease his mother, who, according to the child, was subjecting him to f-bomb laced tirades about improving his studies. Once I learned this, I sat him down privately and told him that it was a hard way to live doing something just to please someone else, and that he needed to figure out a reason for himself to do good work. The next time he showed up at the learning center, he walked all around the center and told anyone who would listen to him about how wise I was. Apparently his schoolwork improved immediately, and he stopped coming to the center shortly after that. It was at that point I began to embrace the idea that I could be as much a mentor as a tutor.
I confess that there have been sessions with students that seemed to drag on forever, though this happens only infrequently nowadays. This is due in large part to a change of perspective on my part, which came about as a consequence of being assigned to work with a number of high functioning autistic students. I'd found this to be rather tedious, even as I began to understand how to make my students feel comfortable and to help them be productive. Then late last year the owner of the firm told me he'd just had a conversion with the mother of a particular autistic student who apparently talks about me all the time at home. This student also gave me a $20 gift card for Christmas. Until then, I had no clue I'd made that kind of connection. Ultimately, I've begun to understand that it's not just about abandoning the idea of minimizing conflict/inconvenience but it's also about instilling comfort into others - so they can go forward with strength.
