I don't usually take on one-to-one tuition any more because.... well, it's one of the least satisfying, least effective types of teaching.... and I don't really like to think of myself as a teacher any more.
But work is so thin on the ground at the moment that I relaxed this principle for once. It was a supposedly able and well-motivated student, a friend-of-a-friend introduction (aren't they all in China?), and a short course with a very clearly defined goal. This I could do. Oh yes, and I'd split the 'classes' with a friend who needs the money even more than I do.
But still I fretted. This was Bad Sign No. 1. I hate to work just for the money; and if I'm honest with myself I have to say here that I would not have taken this job if my financial circumstances were not so straitened at the moment.
Then I meet the guy and discover that he is a complete emotional basketcase. He irritates the crap out of me. He disgusts me on occasion. He scares me a little bit. He is very tightly wound, almost completely socially dysfunctional, and a borderline psychotic. And, not surprisingly, a very, very bad student.
Bad Sign No. 2 was that he cancelled his session today - at about 10 minutes' notice - and my only emotional response was RELIEF.
4 comments:
The Missus joined a gym a couple of months ago, adding onto the basic package four sessions with a personal trainer, supposedly one a week. They've had only one session so far, though, because one or the other keeps calling to cancel -- or should the word be "postpone"? -- on very short notice.
On the other hand, The Missus couldn't fairly be described as a scary, sometimes disgusting, socially dysfunctional, borderline-psychotic emotional basketcase. I prefer to believe the trainer is.
Have you mentioned the situation to the friend-of-the-friend? (Assuming the f of the f is NOT the student!) Or the friend with whom you're co-teaching?
I have been thinking of having a word with the person who made the introduction, but it would be a tricky conversation - and I doubt if she really knows him that well. As I've observed before, the Chinese guanxi concept often works on what strike us in the West as the most tenuous of relationships ("old classmates", lao tongxue, is a particularly strong one: but it can extend way beyond your close friends at university, to everybody in your major in your graduating year - which could be hundreds of people you seldom or never met).
However, I think I will have to say something to her, to see if she can't intervene to help him: the guy needs counselling on his personal life, and on his career/study goals (he's hoping to do an MBA at a leading US school and, in his current condition, he's got no chance).
That totally sucks, Froog. For your student, too.
I met several similarly tightly-wound bundles of anxiety when I was teaching in China. So many of them really do come under the most severe pressure to succeed.
Yes, it's horrifyingly common here, and there's no kind of safety net in the medical service or the community at large.
When I was teaching in universities I came across at least four young men who should have been on a 'watch list' as potentially suicidal (and, indeed, maybe homicidal), but there was no worthwhile counselling available on campus, let alone proper psychiatric care. (In one case, the poor chap had deliberately sought me out, although he wasn't in any of my classes, because he thought - probably rightly - that a foreigner would be more sympathetic to his distress than any of the Chinese staff. Unfortunately, there wasn't really much I could do to help the poor guy. And I confess I avoided getting too involved because he did seem rather scarily unhinged, possibly dangerous.)
I find it surprising that random homicidal attacks - particularly against foreigners, like that one at the Beijing Drum Tower last summer - aren't far more common. (When a friend of mine suffered a near-fatal hatchet attack, my first thought was that it was just such a random laowai-hating nutter; but in fact it turned out to be a targeted attack from a 'love rival' - madness of a different sort.)
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