For twelve years, my parents hired students from Boston University to tutor me in piano and homework. Some of them I still keep in contact with because they were more than just tutors- they were role models and no less than older siblings. Here are three takeaways from being tutored:

1. Responsibility

Very useful tactic. I have one tutor who deals with unexpected situations very responsibly. Once, she got stuck outside on a frigid day. She tried to get in our gate but my mom forgot to unlock it. My tutor texted me that she already left because the gate was locked. When I told her that my dad unlocked the gate, she was away from my home. Nevertheless, she decided to head back to my place. This was a very hard journey because she had to walk in the bitterly cold weather a lot. This shows her strong sense of responsibility.

There was another situation when she knocked on our door and nobody answered it. My mom, my sister, and I were out. We were a bit worried that our tutor would leave right away, assuming we were on vacation. When we arrived back at home, we saw our tutor at the door. She told me she decided to wait for twenty minutes before leaving. When I tutor, I will think about her great sense of responsibility and use it as a tool to help me deal with unexpected situations.

2. Support

During my middle and high school years, I was open to my tutors about my struggles with fitting in. They often said that social situations can be difficult as a teenager and that life gets better in college. One tutor said that you are better off peaking much later in life than in high school. Tutors told me that they have several high school friendships that fell out because you know, people change and that their closest friends are from BU.

My tutors also helped me with stress management particularly around tests. Once I whined to one of them about a challenging physics test I thought I did not do very well on. She told me that worrying about a test already taken without knowing the grade is a waste of time and energy since there is nothing I could do until getting the result back. Another time was when I needed help with anxiety management while studying for a math test. My tutor said to me, “don’t cry before a test, cry after.” Even though crying after a test can be an aforementioned waster, it is better than crying before because doing that would impede studying and therefore affect the grade.

3. Fun

I have had some fun memories with my tutors. When I was a little girl, a tutor introduced a super fun activity that was meant to help me overcome my weakness at the time: writing coherently. The activity was co-writing a story. This emphasized coherent writing because if I wanted the story to go in a certain direction, I had to write coherently so that tutor would be able to cooperate with me.

Another memory was when a tutor of mine who grew up in Paraguay introduced me to the culture there. She told me about a popular tea there that comes in two forms: hot and cold. The hot one is called mate which people drink during the winter. The cold one is tereré which people drink during the summer. I remembered we once made mate during the winter. While I did not like drinking tea, I still enjoyed the experience.

Bottom line is that tutors were like friends to me that I could share with them things about my life. Friends of course are fun. I told them about school activities such as fun moments in the classroom and field trips. One big field trip I had was the traditional eighth grade New York City adventure. I also told tutors about things I did with my friends such as going to Newbury Street to buy clothes and eat Georgetown Cupcakes.