I have been tutoring children of all abilities for many years now but there is one student who I wil always remember. Sarah has shown me that you can achieve anything if you really want it. I know it's a cliche but she has done exactly that and this is how she did it.....
I started tutoring A level Chemistry to Sarah in November last year. Her mother called me because Sarah had got a B grade in her most recent mock exam and was worried that she would not the get the grades for studying medicine. This was her dream and she would do whatever it took to get there.
At least 2 months before her exams she was up at 5 am most mornings to study. She wanted me to go over work that she had not yet covered in class so that she could be better prepared during lessons. If I gave her homework, no matter how much it was, it was always done and on top of that she could show me what other work she had covered. She also had a mountain of past papers and their mark schemes to practice with.
Her diligence was relentless and it paid off. In her most recent mock exam she got 95% but despite this she is still up at 5 am most mornings. Compared to the other students I teach, she is definitely the most hard working and the most mature.
She does not shy away from revision and doesn't make excuses for not revising. One of my students was on a trip to Alton Towers the day before his exam and another was at a friends birthday party the weekend before his exams. Sarah has also told me that her friends are always asking her to go out with them because "you are gonna a get an A anyway" but she politely declines. It angers her that they assume that she is "naturally brainy", and get jealous when she does well in exams. "People think that it's easy for me but they don't see how much I work" she says.
This is what I used to believe, until now. From now on I am going to use Sarah as a role model for my students.