So I'm thinking here as I sit in this fairly small room - "Why am I here?" And then I think, "It's probably because of this little thing some people call a paycheck." Now, if you do not know, I am a math tutor for the math department at SIUE. The department pays me to sit in a tutoring lab and help students who come in for assistance. I quite like this arrangement, because the lab is often empty. In addition, this job allows me to bypass the problems of coming to an agreement about pay rate and available hours. Generally, this job makes everything easier, and I can help students without worrying if I am charging too much. In another sense, this generally "levels the playing field." These students ... (I presume they are students. They come to me with questions from math text books. I don't think many people are deranged to work problems in a math text book without the motivating factor of a class grade or some similar reason.) ... anyway, back to the students. These students are all paying me the glorious rate of nothing ::. Well, it's not nothing. Almost every person I tutor, who actually needs help, gives me insight into effective ways of conveying information to students as a teacher or tutor as well as into methods through which understanding is best obtained on the part of the student. I really strive to be an effective tutor and teacher. Though I know many people are not fond of math, I want to be able to help people gain an understanding of math, so that they may say they choose not to do math. However, I do not want them to say that they can't do math.

I'm going to end this little post now, but I'll return to it another day. I would not want whoever may read this to miss out on the thrilling tales of tutoring the subject of mathematics. ::

sometimes there is an emptiness that one wants to be filled ... but he does not know what that emptiness is :\

due to an increased number of views of my xanga by ... unwanted readers ... i shall postpone all future posts indefinitely ...

Richard