A few days ago, I had my first peer tutoring session of the year. Last year I tutored chemistry to first year students, but this year, I am now also tutoring first year biology and mathematics. I love teaching and helping students succeed in general (this blog itself should make that obvious!), and I am really hoping teaching plays some role in my career.
The very first student I tutored this year needed some help with chemistry. She was very enthusiastic, and was obviously keen on learning, which I like a lot. However, I quickly noticed the reason why she was having trouble with the chemistry problems; it was the same thing I have seen many times in numerous students who were not prepared for the jump to university.
I remember one question she asked me in particular. It was a chemistry problem that provided a chemical equation, as well as the mass of one of the reactants (I’m not going to go into too much detail for those of you who have not taken chemistry, because there’s a more important point I want to get across). We read the question together, and then afterwards, she immediately started converting the mass of the reactants to its amount in moles. However, after reading the question again, I realized that the calculation she was doing was pointless; the calculation she was doing was irrelevant to the answer. But she was doing the calculation anyways because she was on autopilot.