So today was my first day tutoring.

I'm helping this eighth grader with his pre-Algebra. It's through Vikki Oliphant's studio, so I'm being paid about $15 an hour. It's pretty easy, and it's kind of fun, but I was really nervous about this one kid. See, Vikki was really concerned when she was telling me about him: apparently he has Tourette Syndrome (thanks Bethany, you've become my personal spell check) and ADD. On top of that, his dad just died in the last year, his mom's still stressed and depressed, and they're having money problems.

But it turns out I really didn't have anything to worry about. The kid's pretty cool; he has 2 parakeets in his room, plus a bunch of fish, and a big fluffy cat named Baxter. Oh, and he has pages from Victoria's Secret catalogues plastered all over his wall. Seriously. I could barely concentrate. The whole time it was like,

"So negative six minus seven equals negative two, right?"
"Huh? Yeah, yeah, kid."

And he has no noticeable symptoms of Tourette's, apparently he just gets tics when he's under pressure. I get the feeling his attention span is short, but I let him take a lot of breaks, and we talk about stuff in between the math. Apparently he's taking latin with Ms. Whitley, and we reminisced about her for a while (they call her 'Narf' too... it's such a tradition).

So it was good. I think Vikki might pressure me to take up more students... I'm probably going to decline more than one more. I don't want this to become a full-time job. Even though I kind of enjoy it. It's nice helping kids.