Closing Comments
While many tutors view tutoring as just a smart student’s part-time job, I view it something much more important and much more significant than that. When people ask me why I tutor (and why I volunteer as a tutor), my answer is always the following:
I tutor for three reasons:
1. Because it is good for the students.
2. Because it is good for me.
3. Because it is good for society.
Number 1 is obvious. If it was not good for the students, there would not be an LSC.
Number 2 may not so obvious to you. However, countless research studies in educational psychology have shown that helping others is one of the best facilitators of inner growth that a person can experience. By “It is good for me” I do not mean that it is fun or enjoyable to tutor (although it may be). I mean that it literally improves my mental (and therefore physical) and spiritual health. It cannot help but do that because your subconscious mind knows when you are doing a good thing, and it rewards you with warm feelings and a good self image. This is true even if you don’t personally have a conscious appreciation for the good that you are doing. There is a good analogy with vitamins here; vitamins improve your overall health whether you believe in vitamins or not, and despite the fact that you don’t know exactly how they bring about their chemical magic. Tutoring is like taking vitamins. I know this because I have experienced it personally.
Number 3 is an important reason as well. We live in a civilized society in which people help one another in support of both the common good and the individual good. As a participant in the LSC, you help support the common good (namely that there are places which society provides where individuals may get assistance – and free, at that!). Also, and obviously, you also support the individual good – each and every time you help a student who comes in. For both of those reasons, this is very important work.
My bottom-line summary is that people who tutor in the LSC (and in other equivalent places) perform very important work, and have many reasons to feel good about what they do. They benefit from the experience in ways that they may not appreciate, and they help others to an extent that they may sometimes not realize as well.
My personal recommendation to tutors is that they treat tutoring as a very important activity, and that they approach it with respect and enthusiasm. At its best, it can be a great adventure and an avenue to personal growth. Like all activities, it is what you make of it, and if you consciously strive to improve your tutoring skills and methods, your personal rewards will come to you in direct proportion (note the math reference) to the effort that you have made. To that end, if any of the musings of this report help you to advance in the maturity or style of your tutoring activities, then the creation of this report will have fully met its goals.