Chop Wood, Carry Water

Originally uploaded by Tokyorosa

That's a crappy cell phone photo of the detritus of a tutoring session with my niece. You can see up there on the right the crumpled up pages of notes and homework, victims of The Newbie's quick grasp.

Tutoring works this way: I ask my niece if she has any questions. She says, No, not really. And then I take her book and begin to flip through the chapter they're covering in class and I ask her questions. (What are some examples of observable evidence that a chemical reaction has occurred? What are some types of chemical reactions? What are the products of a neutralization reaction? What is an example of a catalyst?) I walk her through the answers. Sometimes she knows the answers but doesn't know how to express them. Learning chemistry is sometimes like learning a new language. (It's not AHCK-kwee-us. It's AY-kwee-us. Exothermic reactions give off heat. Endothermic reactions feel cold because they suck up heat, so to speak.)

Sometimes I smack down poor study habits, as I did today when she told me she hadn't done her homework yet because she hadn't had time to print out the answer key. (No, you need to do these problems and then print out the key and figure out why you got certain problems wrong.) Sometimes I (uselessly, I'm sure) encourage her to challenge her teacher, who doesn't seem like she has terribly firm grasp on some very basic concepts. That really irks me when a teacher is so insecure that they cling to a half-truth rather than admitting that they are either wrong or they don't remember something or they just don't know or that the complete picture is more complicated that is required for an introductory class.

Sometimes I'm tempted to gloss over things that I don't like or that I half-ass learned when I was taking basic chemistry. (Do I really have to memorize polyatomic ions? Turns out, no. Do I really have to understand ionization energy trends on the periodic table? No. Do I really have to remember how to do Lewis dot structures after the test? Pshaw. No.) But I don't let my niece off so easy. I'm more hard-nosed with her than I ever was with myself. I was a pretty lazy student because I could do most things on the fly and the concepts of inorganic chemistry came easy to me. My niece doesn't have that. And she doesn't know how to work the system and she doesn't have the chutzpah to challenge her teachers. Yet.

Before Enlightenment

There was no Gay Spiderman at the gym this morning, and no Gym Boyfriend, either. (I'm a bit disgusted with my Gym Boyfriend these days, though, as he seems to've picked up this strange woman at the gym as a booty call. I say she's strange because although she seems pretty nice, she's the type who wears full makeup and a whole flotilla worth of gold jewelry to the gym. I think that's a bit strange. Not that everyone has to follow my ideas about what constitutes proper gym attire, because let's face it, I sometimes wear my pajamas to the gym. What? They look ike sweats. But you won't see me rocking the frosted eye shadow and plummy rouge look. Not just at the gym, either. I mean ever. Because: Ew. And being a Latina chica, I do love me some stupid big Latina chica earrings, but they're not really gym appropriate, no?)

So no Gay Spiderman and no Gym Boyfriend, but there was a Kelly First though to perch on next to on a StairMaster and exchange gossip with. Sadly, the StairMaster is so precarious and frightening that I can't even really remember what we talked about while we did our time. After, we did a bit of lifting (abs and legs) and a lot more gossiping.

It's really all about the gossiping.