Why do I need to send the assignment before Tutoring?

I have a policy for advanced topics, which requires you to send the assignments or notes that we will discuss during tutoring.

You may not be used to this, and wonder why I have this policy!

Upper level courses are not Standardized

Courses up to calculus are all very standardized. If you take a calculus course in Texas, and someone else takes it in New York, you’ll get almost exactly the same calculus course.

This uniformity is because there is a national AP calculus exam. The national exam forces everyone to cover pretty much the same material in any calculus course, anywhere in America.

After calculus, there is no national standardization. Every university, and even every individual professor, chooses to teach significantly different material.

I’ve taught people in courses titled “real analysis”, who each learned surprisingly little of the same material. I could say the same for “linear algebra” and other course titles.

So I cannot know what you need tutoring in, until I see the assignment and notes. If I don’t have that, I might fail to teach you material that you need to know.

I may need to Brush Up

Suppose that you’re studying real analysis, and right now you need to learn topic X.

I’ve tutored real analysis every semester for the last five years. I’ve seen topics A through W just last semester. But I haven’t see X in over five years, because most classes choose not to cover it.

Therefore, I need to go re-learn X, before I can talk to you about it.

Seeing the exercises, tells me ahead of time which topics I may need to brush up on.

Some Exercises are Hard

Some of these topics are hard. Even if I have very recently taught topic X, it’s still possible to find some very tricky exercise problems. If they’re very tough, I might need an hour to figure out the solution.

If you’ve scheduled to meet with me for an hour, and I spend that hour just trying to come up with one solution to one problem, and don’t entirely finish, I’ll feel as though I have done a bad job — and likely, you will too.

I don’t want that; you don’t want that. So please let me figure out the problems in advance, and then we can talk about them.

Help me to do a good job

Some courses are standardized enough that I can probably tutor them without seeing the exercises in advance. But I’d rather not take the chance.

So please, help me to help you. Send the exercises, every time that you want to make an appointment.

Depending on how busy I am with my other students, I may need a day or two to look over the exercises before I’m ready to schedule.