Worst tutoring session ever...
I've never walked away from a student before. Hopefully I don't have to again.
This schmuck had me frustrated at a previous session before, where he brought a friend along (I assumed gf, I'm possibly mistaken) whose only input into the session was to speak to him in Chinese 90% of the time that she spoke, and to look incredulous when I tried to walk them through the reasoning of a particular problem. Incredulous because, you see, she had all the answers from her friend so the most efficient route to the high grade was to simply memorise them.
This is for Phil 120, intro to critical thinking and logic. Otherwise known as Irony 101.
So this kid really worked on my nerves today. He kept asking to meet at times I had already told him that I was busy during. We finally manage to settle on 11am today, at Breka. He's never been there, I told him "go to Fraser St and 49th Ave" and he said ok. This was last night.
I'm at Breka at 10.45. I get a call at 10.55. He doesn't know where he's going. He's driving. He's coming from Metrotown. At this point, I'm annoyed.
I ask if he know's 49th Ave. He says 'yes', so I say "drive west. Fraser st is a major junction". He says sure, and that he has GPS.
11.05 he calls back. He's on Kingsway and something. I don't understand why he's on Kingsway. This would not be inline with the instructions that I gave him. He doesn't know how to get to Fraser & 49th, because the GPS doesn't understand his request. Or something. His 'is a complete tool' rating is increasing.
So I inform him that everything is fine, as Kingsway intersects with Fraser, and to just turn south onto Fraser which will put him about 14th (I even say "that's one-four") ave, and he needs to get to 49th.
11.15 he calls back. He's confirming 49th ave, and he's on 44th. Does he have time to stop into the bank to get cash?
I'm on a slow boil at this point, and just say yes. I text him that Breka is roughly 3 doors south of the junction, and just hope that he doesn't get lost en route.
We start, finally, at 11.25. I generally allow for one late session with each student, after which I inform them that I'll be charging from the agreed time in future. He tells me that he wants to go over all his sub-optimal homework assignments (they're done online, and the due date still hasn't arrived. Really, this course is *designed* to give everyone-who-tries-at-all an A) to bump up their mark.
We start going through those assignments. He picks an answer (they are all diagrams, and multiple choice questions about said diagram). I ask why he chose that (he's right about 20% of the time, it looks like he's simply guessing). He rolls his eyes, usually responds "I don't know what the answer is". I start to explain how to reason through it. More eye-rolling.
He patiently explains to me that he's not a Philosophy major. That he doesn't "need to know" all this stuff. That Venn diagrams are not relevant to his chosen field (Economics). That he just wants me to correct his answers (i.e. give him the answers) to bump up his mark.
I not-so-patiently explain that Venn diagrams are not relevant to Philosophy either, but that the purpose of this course is to teach reasoning skills, which *is* relevant to all disciplines, including Economics. I attempted to explain to the monkey that 1st year anything courses do not particularly test reasoning skills, but are focused on mere memorization and regurgitation, but that later courses (i.e. 3rd year and particularly 4th year) will heavily rely on reasoning. (I fully accept that I'm making assumptions here, it's quite possible that Economics doesn't require any reasoning skills, but I'm attempting to be charitable and avoid my usual douche clichés regarding Econ)
Idiot-boy rolls his eyes again, and proclaims that I'm only saying that because I'm a philosophy student and this 'reasoning' stuff is important to me.
I walk out.
This idiot fulfills the bulk of the stereotypes about business/econ students. I really hope 2nd year Econ beats some sense into him.
So we're really clear that I'm not misjudging this guy: he offered to pay me to sit his final supervised exam for him two weeks ago. What a piece of crap.