For all my life, I’ve been the kind of person to figure it out myself. I don’t understand fractions? I’ll ask the teacher questions or learn it from my parents. I don’t know what to write about in English? I’ll ask my parents for ideas, or sit in my room, noting down my thoughts until I can get a clear picture in my head. I like having that sense of control, the sort that gives me the self confidence that I can do it on my own. Though that’s just me.

My entire life, I have never gone to academic tuitions, never gotten a tutor for a specific subject. Though it’s not because I believe I can understand everything first try, but it’s because I know that if I practice enough, I’ll be able to get it right. It fits in with my way of learning because it involves learning a concept my way.

For example, there are multiple ways to solve a problem in math, and all of them will give you a right answer, but only one way will be the most comfortable for you. It’s the same with tutors. Some benefit you and make way for progress, while others can confuse you even more because of their style of teaching.

I believe that everyone requires a tutor and is benefitted by them, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be an outside source. My two biggest tutors and supporters have been my parents. Whenever I thought that I can’t do it, or I gave up, they pushed me to keep trying until I had a better sense of the concept, one step at a time, until I finally reached the point where I was able to do it as well as like it in the process.

That’s what happened with me and math. As an elementary schooler, math was never my thing. As I grew up, I realized that math, science and logic go hand in hand, though I was surprised to find that I always liked science and logic puzzles, but never math. It was ok till 3rd grade, where all we were learning was addition, subtraction, and multiplication. Though 4th grade was when I didn’t like it, due to fractions. I didn’t understand them, and thought to myself, why do we even need to divide a cupcake, can’t you just eat the whole thing? That’s when my mom and I sat down each evening, trying to understand the impossible concepts of dividing a pizza.

Slowly, I started gaining confidence in myself, in my ability to understand a concept if I just kept the perseverance. It felt good to do a problem and get it right. It made me determined to get more of them right, and the process continued. Over time, I found myself doing just enough problems to grasp the concept, and hence never needed tuitions. In fact, this perseverance transformed into my love for the subject, and it’s my favorite class. I can go hours solving math problems for an upcoming test, playing music in the background and sitting at my desk, it’s almost meditative for me at this point. I’m currently in Pre-calculus, which is technically two levels higher than the usual 10th grade level math because I was qualified to do Algebra 1 in 7th grade instead of middle school math. I became self-motivated to do well in all my subjects.

I have always been a target-oriented girl, which I realized in middle school. If you give me a certain goal, and I understand the importance of it, I’ll do anything to achieve it, even if it meant sitting on the floor for 5 hours gluing together a carboard disco ball with foil (that’s happened once during my engineering class in 7th grade).

I am proud to say I never needed outside help, besides my parents and teachers. I believe that learning subjects is beyond just grades, it’s about being able to understand concepts and apply it in the real world. I’m not saying that tutoring is either good or bad, it comes in 50 shades of gray. it’s different for all kinds of people, and they might need a different approach in learning to be able to imbibe and be interested in it. It turns out, I just needed a nudge in the right direction to allow me to fly. - Navaka