Gun For Hire

Finals week is coming up at the local high schools and nearby Big University. I've been tutoring like crazy for the past 2 weeks, from one end of town to the other and a range of topics from geometry to organic chemistry.

I'm seeing myself as an academic "gun for hire". Like the small town that hires the gunslinger to handle the bad element that the local law and order can't seem to take care of, I'm hired to take care of concepts that the students can't get from the instructor of record. Instead of fighting on a dusty road outside of a saloon, I face down the students' foes in the library or coffee shop. I'm there to get results, not to share my pie in the sky teaching philosophy, pedagogical motivations and deep love of some of these topics. I find myself saying a phrase that I despise when I teach "don't worry about why, just memorize it".

Why I'm hired varies. For some, I'm helping fill in holes from classes missed during an illness. For others, I appear to be some sort of homework police-they do the work just to show it to me. A few others are using me to digest their class material and regurgitate it into their brains as if they are hungry baby birds. I really HATE that last group, but their money spends just as well as the first two groups, and my mortgage company really doesn't care about my teaching philosophy!

I'm also doing some test prep with some students. The AP Chemistry exam was last week and now I'm working on SAT Chemistry and MCAT. I'm learning a lot about those exams and may continue some test prep stuff in the future. I'm intrigued by the MCAT reading selections and questions and am wondering how to work those into my courses.

So I'm packing up my gear to go into another besieged student. I'm armed with a lot of scrap paper, a calculator and something to read while she works problems. I'll fight confusion in a coffee shop and struggle to keep this young woman on task. And in two weeks when finals are over, I'll ride off into the sunset, hoping that summer session provides new "towns" in need of my help.

Has it really been THAT long since I posted?

My apologies to those who follow this blog. I hadn't realized it had been so long since my last post. I just haven't had a coherent, well developed idea in a few weeks. I've got some nuggets that I need to expand into actual blogs, and here's some of them...

I really thought this blog would focus on how hard it is to be away from my work. Turns out it isn't really that hard! I'm not sure if it's because I was getting burned out at work, or if it is because what I was dealing with here didn't leave much emotional room to worry about my job. Either way, I'm thinking a lot about this in light of my never ending goal of not letting my job run my life. More on that topic later.

We're starting to get a plan together that will hopefully allow my Mom to stay in her house when I go back to work. We're interviewing "companion care" providers now. Again, more on that topic later.

How am I doing? I'm not sure. I'm not sad. I really don't have any trouble talking about my Dad. Unfortunately, my memories are mostly of him in his last few weeks. I really hope those fade out to happier memories soon. I'd been very frustrated with Mom, but we're doing better now. I've been very busy tutoring and worrying about how I'll pay bills until my paychecks start back up in September.

In two years, I've had 4 good friends from my U leave. It is very strange. Why did they go? Why do I stay? Again, more later.