I am thinking of my tutee right now. It’s 2am and I was just about to sleep but my mind’s pushing to places. I am thinking about my tutee and how our interaction today was different from any other sessions we had. It was the first time we had a three-hour session; it was supposedly for two hours only. It was the first time she cracked a joke on me, two actually; the first time we had a deal (that if she fail her long test tomorrow, I’ll make her run 5 rounds in the UP Acad Oval) I think she liked the idea but acted like she didn’t. Oh, high school girls. I’ve been there before; the first time we had a physical contact, that is, a high five whenever she gets the right answer just minutes before we ended the session; the first time we were actually almost being just ourselves – mocking each other and telling random things, whatever comes out. I must admit, at that time, I was becoming happy with what I was doing – teaching a high school student math. I never said I don’t like doing it before. As a matter of fact, I like doing it but sometimes slow people just gets into my nerves. Today, I loved teaching.
The mood at the beginning of that session was very different compared to the latter part of it. Because, before we began with what I planned to do, she handed me her quizzes on simplification and addition/subtraction of radicals, and her scores were almost like friction, negligible. Just almost. Or maybe I just have high standards for negligibility. I was so heartbroken at the time and I want to break down. But my intervention has not sunk in those tests yet, I thought. I hoped. I’m the type who does not easily give up, especially if I know I can do better. And I was certain I can do better with teaching her, pushing her to her limits.
I started the session the mock exam I made beforehand. And while she was into it, I was examining her exam papers. Oh, the pieces of my heart were just falling down those sheets. I computed her scores, 35% overall. A mountain and seven seas from the 75% passing grade. And to think tomorrow’s her long test? Oh, I could die. What have I done wrong? Am I not teaching her well? I can only blame myself. I want to tell you she really isn’t interested in the subject and if only she could pass by running a thousand miles instead of solving math problems, I’d swear she’d do it. But the blame’s still on me.
So what do I do when I’m teaching a student who’s not at all interested in the subject?
She loves running, or her team, or the field. I don’t know but her heart is obviously everywhere else, just not in math. She just got suspended from running/competing because she failed math. She won first place in the 2k event but she can’t get her medal because, technically, she’s no longer part of the team. And there are a lot of things she could lose if she continues to fail math. Not only her track team, but also her high school or her batchmates. If she succeeds in failing math once again, she won’t be allowed to enter third year in the same school. That means, either she has to transfer to another school or repeat second year high school. If only my opinion matters, either of the two is a good way to go. Because in my opinion, she hasn’t learn anything in math since Grade 1. It’s really disappointing to have to go back to the basics when you are teaching a second year high school student, who cannot even add fractions! Oh, it gets into my nerves.
It’s heartbreaking. I can tell by the stories and the tone of her voice that she really loves to run. She’d rather train than study math! When we change the topic from math to running, the tone of her voice suddenly shifts from bored to excited. It just pumps her up.
What I like about teaching is that it makes my short piece of patience longer. Really it does. I swear, when it comes to people who are slow to pick up, I don’t have the patience to discuss a lot of things with them a lot of times. I just don’t want to get into that kind of trouble.
But the thing about teaching math (or any subject for that matter) is that it’s not actually just your student you’re teaching or who’s learning. It’s not actually just your student who’s getting something from you. If you think I’m saying I am getting something from my student, well you are partly right. The thing is, I am getting something from myself as well. If she’s not picking up what I said, then that would only mean I am not communicating well with her. I am not conveying the words in a manner she’d understand. This is something I learned from my boy. I learned a lot of things from him. He’d make a good teacher. He was good for me.
Going back to my tutee, I think what we need is rapport. First and foremost, she has to trust me. And even if it’s hard, I have to trust her – that she’ll be able to pick things up. She tells me things she doesn’t want to tell her mom, and I think that’s a good start. But she’s a kid, she tells a lot of things.
I want this tutor-tutee relationship work. It’s like having a little sister. I want to take her to UP, to show her what a nice campus UP has. I want to tell her about architecture and what good things that comes from it and all about its grandeur and elegance. I want to take her for a jog regularly and we’ll have breakfast somewhere. And we’ll talk about math discreetly. I want to be a good model for her – show her how important it is to balance things in life, like training for running and math and other school stuff. I want to tell her what I wished I have known when I was still in high school. I want to warn her about life outside the family and how it feels to be far from home. I want her to be good in math, and a lot of other things. I want her to like numbers like I do, and letters, and art. I want her to grow up to be better than me.
Showing posts with label relationships. Show all posts
Showing posts with label relationships. Show all posts
Friday, November 18, 2011
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
On Having Second Thoughts on Something I Used to be so Sure of
Time can do a lot of things apart from healing wounds. It can also aggravate a wound, to a point that it hurts too much that you can no longer feel the pain. And the broken can’t be mended.
I thought I wouldn’t be perturbed by the distance and time that separate us. With a tweak in dealing with my everyday and through the impassiveness towards the issue of divergence, I believed that I can do anything, everything just as long as I know that you are with me. Somehow, realizations, although in a manner not so deliberate, crossed my mind, and everything I used to believe in turned out to be all fabrications now, understanding how I have successfully convinced myself for the past three years that I can manage to keep the thing alive, which I actually managed to do. Knowing that you are with me is not enough; you have to be with me. But since for now, it is not possible and no matter how much we want to be with each other, it just can’t happen. What’s worse is that the space between us expands as time leaves us behind that I can no longer touch you, see you, talk to you, shout at you, or even be with you in mind or in spirit. The distance between us has extended too long, too convoluted that it covered up the memories that we once had and the days that would have been spent together.
Maybe nothing else should matter as long as we love each other. But this separation, the distance and time that should have been transcended, has caused too much pain in me that it makes me weak rather than tough. This weakness brought me to believing things far removed from what I used to have faith in, forgetting about the kind of happiness that had once lived within me and getting acquainted to a lesser kind.
This distance and time brought us too far away from each other that we don’t grow connected together anymore. I feel so small for having been left behind. I feel so weak, so helpless that no matter how much I want to change everything that’s happening, I have no power to do so. But I am happy by the fact that you are happy. I am happy by the fact that you are only a few steps closer to your dream. Although we are growing on our own, away from each other, I am happy because you seem to love the way you are growing, loving the path that you chose. And I’ll never say that you made a wrong choice; something bigger than life is right in your hands and to not grab and hold on it tightly would be an absurd thing to do.
I have realized that when you love someone, you’re happiness isn’t that important at all. What’s more important is the happiness of the one you love that the things that make him happy makes you happy just the same or even more.
There is love, and there is love at the wrong place and at the wrong time. Maybe ours is an example of such. The place and time may be wrong, but the person and the love, which are more important, will never be wrong. It’s causing me so much pain to know that you are with me but not by my side, but I think it’s better than you being by my side but not with me.
I have thought of letting go of this love and I won’t deny that. Perhaps it’s because of the anguish I feel at times of your total absence or the partial presence, but these are nothing compared to the happiness in its deepest sense with just a smile and how I feel for you. I want to hold on to us for the rest of my life because I have never felt this sure ever in my life. If, by some chance or choice we bump into each other sooner or later, I hope you’ll be the same Derek I’ve always known.
I thought I wouldn’t be perturbed by the distance and time that separate us. With a tweak in dealing with my everyday and through the impassiveness towards the issue of divergence, I believed that I can do anything, everything just as long as I know that you are with me. Somehow, realizations, although in a manner not so deliberate, crossed my mind, and everything I used to believe in turned out to be all fabrications now, understanding how I have successfully convinced myself for the past three years that I can manage to keep the thing alive, which I actually managed to do. Knowing that you are with me is not enough; you have to be with me. But since for now, it is not possible and no matter how much we want to be with each other, it just can’t happen. What’s worse is that the space between us expands as time leaves us behind that I can no longer touch you, see you, talk to you, shout at you, or even be with you in mind or in spirit. The distance between us has extended too long, too convoluted that it covered up the memories that we once had and the days that would have been spent together.
Maybe nothing else should matter as long as we love each other. But this separation, the distance and time that should have been transcended, has caused too much pain in me that it makes me weak rather than tough. This weakness brought me to believing things far removed from what I used to have faith in, forgetting about the kind of happiness that had once lived within me and getting acquainted to a lesser kind.
This distance and time brought us too far away from each other that we don’t grow connected together anymore. I feel so small for having been left behind. I feel so weak, so helpless that no matter how much I want to change everything that’s happening, I have no power to do so. But I am happy by the fact that you are happy. I am happy by the fact that you are only a few steps closer to your dream. Although we are growing on our own, away from each other, I am happy because you seem to love the way you are growing, loving the path that you chose. And I’ll never say that you made a wrong choice; something bigger than life is right in your hands and to not grab and hold on it tightly would be an absurd thing to do.
I have realized that when you love someone, you’re happiness isn’t that important at all. What’s more important is the happiness of the one you love that the things that make him happy makes you happy just the same or even more.
There is love, and there is love at the wrong place and at the wrong time. Maybe ours is an example of such. The place and time may be wrong, but the person and the love, which are more important, will never be wrong. It’s causing me so much pain to know that you are with me but not by my side, but I think it’s better than you being by my side but not with me.
I have thought of letting go of this love and I won’t deny that. Perhaps it’s because of the anguish I feel at times of your total absence or the partial presence, but these are nothing compared to the happiness in its deepest sense with just a smile and how I feel for you. I want to hold on to us for the rest of my life because I have never felt this sure ever in my life. If, by some chance or choice we bump into each other sooner or later, I hope you’ll be the same Derek I’ve always known.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
LDR is not a disease.
LDR is not a disease, my dear. It is not something to be scared of. Neither is it contagious and deadly.
At first, it did not scare me much since distance is something that we have had ever since our day one. We went in the same high school and we’re classmates until our senior year, and ‘us’ began when we separated sections. After graduation, we went on different schools: He on the northern part of the Philippines and I on the South. Not long after college classes began, he transferred to a school near mine; he went back to high school through an international school. The following year, I transferred from my first campus to another as planned and expected. When he graduated high school (for the second time), he went abroad for college. This time, the distance is not the northern and southern parts of the country but the ends of the world; we are now approximately 8, 027 miles apart. And I’m talking miles here. Thousands of miles apart!
He and I are distanced from each other but the relationship is too flexible, too easily stretched out that it adjusts itself with whatever circumstances come about. Love transcends space, distance and time. Nevertheless, I am not saying that being away from each other is as easy as ABC. Believe me; it is way too far from being easy. At times, memories flood in and you just can’t help but miss his presence and wish he’d be there beside you right at that moment. At times, you feel it’s unbearable, too heavy for you to carry. But you have to think that you are not carrying it alone, someone’s helping you and you have to help him as well. You tend to break down, but you don’t, because you know that you are strong enough. And the thought that somewhere, somehow, someone thinks of you and feels the same way makes you feel that that someone also depends on the strength you keep and it just makes you tougher, to stand alone mightily for that one moment. And life for the both of you goes on…
So when two people love each other, really really love each other, but they just can’t seem to get it together, when do you get to that point where enough is enough?
Never.
At first, it did not scare me much since distance is something that we have had ever since our day one. We went in the same high school and we’re classmates until our senior year, and ‘us’ began when we separated sections. After graduation, we went on different schools: He on the northern part of the Philippines and I on the South. Not long after college classes began, he transferred to a school near mine; he went back to high school through an international school. The following year, I transferred from my first campus to another as planned and expected. When he graduated high school (for the second time), he went abroad for college. This time, the distance is not the northern and southern parts of the country but the ends of the world; we are now approximately 8, 027 miles apart. And I’m talking miles here. Thousands of miles apart!
He and I are distanced from each other but the relationship is too flexible, too easily stretched out that it adjusts itself with whatever circumstances come about. Love transcends space, distance and time. Nevertheless, I am not saying that being away from each other is as easy as ABC. Believe me; it is way too far from being easy. At times, memories flood in and you just can’t help but miss his presence and wish he’d be there beside you right at that moment. At times, you feel it’s unbearable, too heavy for you to carry. But you have to think that you are not carrying it alone, someone’s helping you and you have to help him as well. You tend to break down, but you don’t, because you know that you are strong enough. And the thought that somewhere, somehow, someone thinks of you and feels the same way makes you feel that that someone also depends on the strength you keep and it just makes you tougher, to stand alone mightily for that one moment. And life for the both of you goes on…
So when two people love each other, really really love each other, but they just can’t seem to get it together, when do you get to that point where enough is enough?
Never.
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