Is tutoring right for you?
Tutoring benefits many students, but not all. It’s important to recognize whether tutoring is right for you. Here are some factors to consider when deciding whether to find a tutor:
Time
One of the most common mistakes students make is thinking that tutoring replaces independent study — it doesn’t.
If you don’t have the extra hour per week to put towards studying, replacing an hour of homework or assignment time with tutoring is only going to set you back. Tutoring is fantastic at helping us understand difficult concepts, but homework and assignments just take time. Even if you work through your homework and assignments with your tutor, it will probably take more time than if you had done it on your own — though it will be of higher quality due to your tutor’s guidance. If you already struggle to find the time to get your schoolwork done, you should consider freeing up some more time in your schedule before starting tutoring.
Personal Motivation
Many students come to us hoping to improve their grades or get back on track. Often there are skills missing from previous years of school that need to be built up and, meanwhile, keeping up with new content is much harder. In the same way that a runner who has fallen behind in a race needs to run much faster than their competitors in order to catch up, students who want to catch up to their classmates will need to do more work than their peers. For some, the idea of putting in more hours and working harder than others is too daunting. Moreover, choosing to work harder might involve sacrifices like heading to the library in your study periods rather than chatting with your friends. Getting help from a tutor can help you learn topics quickly, but they can’t do the practice for you.
Responsibility
Your tutor is relying on you to know what’s going on at school: they need you to know when your assessments are given out and due, what texts you’re studying, and they need you to pay attention to your teacher’s advice. Sometimes students get too comfortable with how easy tutoring makes everything. Unfortunately, if you take class time for granted you’ll miss out on opportunities to practice your skills and hints about what will be in your assessments. Not using class time well will result in you having to put in many more hours of your free time to make up for it. Tutoring can harm the educational outcomes of students who view tutoring as an alternative to working hard at school.
When done correctly tutoring boosts your confidence and strengthens your skills; it can take students from struggling to excelling, but under the wrong conditions it can hurt students too. If you have the time, motivation and responsibility to use tutoring to your advantage reach out to start your tutoring journey today.