Alexia’s POV
I had signed up with my teacher as an AP Chemistry tutor, seeing as I took that class and aced it last year.
Despite that it was only the beginning of the year, I already had someone to tutor with failing marks. Great, this should be fun.
We ended up having free period in the same time slot, so it was arranged that we would meet once a week during last period on Tuesday and one more time after school on Thursdays.
So I got to meet my tutoree today.
I walked to the library which was the designated meeting place. I had made sure to grab all of my AP Chemistry stuff from last year, and did a very light brush up by going over the study guides I made.
Once I reached the library I sat at an empty table, my hands holding up my head as I scanned the room for anyone that looked as if they could be the person I was supposed to tutor.
It wasn’t long before I saw a boy with light blonde hair walk in, looking uncomfortable and his hands shoved into his pockets. He was also looking around, bright blue eyes taking in the setting of the library. It almost seemed as if he’d never been in here.
Well, I guess this is the guy I’m supposed to tutor. What was his name again? Connor?
Getting up, I walked over to him with a polite smile on my face.
Once I reached him, I tapped him on the shoulder. “Hi, are you here for AP Chem tutoring?” I asked, and he nodded.
“Yeah, are you my tutor?” This time I nodded.
“Yup. We can work over here,” I said, guiding him to the table I was just seated at. “So, what grade are you in?” I asked, trying to make simple conversation to get to know him better. “Oh, and my name’s Alexia,” I added as an afterthought.
“Cool, I’m Colin and I’m a senior.” He grinned and I couldn’t help but notice what a nice smile it was.
“Nice to meet you, I’m also a senior.” After we were situated and he had his things laid out in front of him, I decided that we should probably use as much time as possible to bring his grade up. “So what’s going on with your grades?”
He gave me a sheepish look, eyes still bright. “Well, as you probably heard, they’re not doing too well. Actually there just downright awful, I’m failing.” I practically cringed at the word failing. I couldn’t help but wonder how it was possible to fail. Working incredibly hard somehow became ingrained into me and now I didn’t know the meaning of procrastination or laziness. Striving to do the absolute best was now just a part of me. To hear someone say they were failing? It was foreign to me in all honesty.
“Okay, so what don’t you understand?” I asked, gesturing to his notes. “Is it a certain lesson? Or just something in general?”
He flipped open to a page in his binder before pointing at it to show me. “That,” he said. “All these formulas and how to find percentages and stuff.”
I looked at his paper, analyzing the notes he had scribbled down. I frowned as I realized something seemed off. Aside from the fact that all the answers he had written were incorrect
“Hold on,” I told him as I quickly scoured my own notes until I found the right page. “Okay, so first of all, you have the wrong formula down.” Erasing the things he wrote, I rewrote the correct formula. “Secondly, you’re going to need to know how to rearrange the formula in order to solve, say, this problem. Remember that e undoes ln in this situation so this would be the correct formula.” After writing a few more things, I showed it to him. “See? Does this make a bit more sense?”
I watched as his lips thinned in concentration, his finger tracing over the things I had written as if that would help him to understand it. I watched as he went over it again and again, each time his face getting more confused.
Eventually he shook his head, a sigh of exasperation leaving his lips. “I still don’t get it.”
“Here, let me do a problem out then I’ll explain it.” Making up a problem similar to those on his paper, I scribbled some stuff down pointing things out as I went along. “Better?”
He shook his head again, and I held back a sigh as I wrote down another problem, going through it and explaining it once more.
This happened three or four times before something finally happened.
As per usual, I asked him if he understood after I went through it again, and this time he had an answer.
“I.. think.. so?” His words were slow and unsure, but I could see the wheels turning as he picked up his pencil and started marking things down. “So you just have to substitute that in for that, then use the reverse formula in order to solve for the variable?”
I felt a smile break out onto my face, the elation at actually teaching someone fluttering in my chest. “Yes! That’s exactly what you do! Then if you had a problem like this,” I paused to write down another problem, “you just have to rearrange the formula to solve for it. It’s like algebra, you’d just have to divide this then use the inverse to multiply by that.” I basically saw it click in his mind, as he went through and solved the problem .
“Is that right?” He pointed to his answer with the end of the pencil and I felt like clapping.
“Yes!” I cheered. “So you get it now?” I chirped excitedly.
He smiled. “I think so, yeah. I have a re-take after school on this stuff, and I might actually do really well on it.” His grin grew bigger.
“That’s good. So does that mean you want to keep practicing these?”
He nodded vigorously, and I couldn’t help but laugh a little. He was like a little kid who had just gotten a big ice cream sundae, bouncing around in his seat as he waited in anticipation for the problems I was making up. It definitely seemed as if he was enjoying this, where as I would have classified him as the kind of person to go out of his way to not do it.
I handed him a piece of paper with three more problems in it, and I worked on some of my homework while he did those out. This was my free period after all.
“Done,” he said, shoving the paper in my direction. It had taken him approximately ten minutes to do them out, and free period was close to over by now. None the less, I focused on looking over his problems.
“The answers are all right,” I told him after I had done out all the calculations, “but don’t forget that when you’re solving for K the answer is in inverse time.” I corrected that one problem, before handing it back to him. “Free period’s almost over, you should let me know how you do on that retake though.” I wrote my number on a piece of paper before giving it to him. “I’d love to know if my tutoring helped you or not.”
He nodded, still smiling. “Don’t worry, you helped a ton. I didn’t understand this stuff at all, I don’t even know why I chose to take AP Chem,” he admitted.
The bell rang as soon as he finished speaking, and we both gathered our things to leave. I was just about the door when he stopped me.
“See you after school on Thursday? Same place at 2:05?”
“Yup, I’ll see you there.”
I was actually really excited to see Colin again. He had the potential to do really well in school, I could see it by the way he solved those problems. He just needed for things to go a bit slower and he could raise his rank by a lot.
That’d make my parents proud; knowing that their daughter was working hard enough for two people.
Maybe that would finally please them.
.
.
.
still trying to get a feel for the characters, so bear with me ^^ this was just to get to know Colin a bit, what's your opinion on him?
It may be a bit early to ask this, but who do you like better so far? Lee or Colin?