Congratulations. You’ve just leased a Rolls-Royce. Your tutor is like a fancy car you’ve got all to yourself.
Now you need to know how to drive.
Classroom education is like a bus—it’s big and everyone has to share. It’s also more expensive than the Rolls-Royce—you couldn’t afford to buy one all by yourself—and even if you did, it wouldn’t be the best use of your money since it’s maneuverability and pickup are lousy. (No offense, classroom education.) But you are sharing it—so, whether you like it or not, everyone in the class is going to the same place and going there in a really big box. And since the teacher's always been the one driving, you've never had to give much thought to these two important questions: Where is it I really want to go? and, What's the best way for me to get there?
With your own personal Rolls-Royce, you get to decide where you drive--and how fast. Most people who hire a tutor don’t even utilize a tenth of the potential benefits a tutor can provide, because they’re only used to riding the bus (with the teacher doing the driving). Driving your personal Rolls Royce is a completely different game, and to get the most benefit, you need to figure out a few things. So I’ve taken the time to write up a description of some of the possibilities, the things you can get out of working with a personal tutor.
While your tutor can’t make you perform better--you ultimately have to do that--your tutor creates the environment in which you’re much more likely to succeed and improve. Whereas your teacher has to create one environment to support 20 different people’s progress all at the same time—plus give out the grades--your personal assistant can focus specifically on creating one environment for you. Virtually all tutors agree that building confidence is the main key to raising performance—and it’s much easier for a person who’s not giving any grades to help you with that.
Your tutor provides much better support for:
--greater ease writing fast and even timed test essays—even if you’re a person who’s always struggled with “not having enough time”
--improved clarity of writing
(Often you get penalized for your lack of clear expression of the ideas you have, not on any lack of quality of the ideas themselves; mostly it’s a communication problem, not a content problem.)
--and improved clarity of thinking too
(Thinking is a skill, not a talent: you can be smart and think unclearly, or you can be dumb and know how to think clearly. Some of the dumbest people in the world are the most successful, and many smart people fall into the “intelligence trap” (see Edward DeBono, Teach Your Child How to Think. New York: Penguin, 1992). [By the way, if your goal is be dumb and highly successful, ask about my secret lead-based formula.]
As with writing clearly, if you have great ideas but you don’t know how to “think around” them to get them into words, you will find them zooming past and disappearing before you can catch them, and it’s completely natural to feel frustrated when your grade doesn’t reflect the quality of the initial idea.)
--and, obviously, better grades
You can also learn/receive:
--two real ways to revise
--tools custom-fitted to your unique working style
--principles of rhetoric and persuasion and of clarity
--ways of getting the words on the page to match what you were thinking
--demystification of the writing process, and removal of common illusions about writing
--a way to write better and with less effort
How to get more from your tutor (a beginning):
--ask for what you want (ask for anything at all--want it to be more fun? ask. more directed? ask. less directed? you may be pleasantly surprised at what you can get)
--give feedback (you don't get to do this in class much--but any tutor will welcome feedback; she/he can't read your mind)
--conduct experiments--and don't believe anything he/she says! (if your tutor suggests that something might work, test it out for yourself and see--this is about your needs, and if it doesn't work for you, then it's not because you're wrong, it's because that particular tool wasn't the right one.)
Ultimately writing can be one of the most meaningful activities you ever participate in, and it may be that if you begin planting seeds now, one day you’ll find yourself looking forward to writing an essay.
Here are the keys.
Article contributed by Joshua Myrvaagnes
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