Random Comments From Students

A math tutoring day with nine sessions

After nine math tutor sessions in the same day I barely remember where I was during the day yesterday but I remember some random comments my students made during the tutoring sessions. The show must go on, so I have no time to go into detail about any thoughts or opinions I may have about the following topics. I just present here some of the comments I remember, in case you find them interesting.
Some paragraphs below are single comments made by students. Two paragraphs are short pieces of dialogue, as indicated.

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“I already understand everything we have seen so far but my mom wanted me to come take this tutoring session anyway.”

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“This problem is actually pretty easy! That’s weird. I was expecting it to be this huge big thing but it’s just that simple!”

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“Volume is everything that goes inside, it is the whole space!”

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Student: “Well, they say these lines bisect these angles, then this half angle should be 33 as well.”
Me: “Exactly! Very good. Now, could you do the same with the two other half angles? Can we write x and y for those two other half angles, as well?”
Student: “No! You cannot do that because you don’t know how much x is.”

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Student: “I’m sure I’m never going to use this stuff in my life, ever! This is so boring!”
Me: “What would you rather be doing?”
Student: “Anything!”
Me: “For example?”
Student: “Writing a speech.”
Me: “About what?”
Student: “About how math is silly, and stupid, and totally useless. They just make us waste our time struggling with these things.”
Me: “Imagine a world where nobody had to take math classes, only people who really wanted it.”
Student: “That would be awesome! But then you would be out of a job, and a whole bunch of other people would be out of a job as well. They just want the system to keep going the way it is because they want to protect their jobs. I don’t want to disrupt anything. I wouldn’t take away people’s jobs.”

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“Oh, decimals! Decimals always confuse me. I always get confused when I see decimals.”

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“These are my notes, sorry. I don’t know what was going on over here. He was going so fast, oh my God! I was just writing down everything as fast as I could but I didn’t understand anything. Well, I understood a little bit but not really.”

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“Do we add these, or do we multiply them? This is getting so confusing! It is so much! And he said this is just skimming the surface of it, can you imagine?”

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“At the beginning I was actually enjoying this class, and I was interested but now I don’t care anymore, I am not interested. I just want this to be over, I just want to get a passing grade in this class. The final is coming up, and I’m getting so stressed out!”

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“Why did they invent all of this? What for? Is it used anywhere? Does it have a purpose?”

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“Oh! So, that’s what remainders are! That is very good to know because there are a whole lot of problems that use those things.”

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“That is so cool! I never knew that! Is this kind of math used in the real world?”

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“What did I do now?”

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“Oh, no! My bad.”

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“First we move this bad boy over here to the other side. Then x equals 6, then x equals 3, then x equals 9, and this is what we add. Now we square the equation but there is no square root of 7, so that’s it. Am I good so far?”

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