Learning Alongside your Peers (JC Maths Tuition)

Today we will be exploring some ways in which we can grow alongside our peers and strive to perform well for the ‘A’ Levels examinations together. Friendship can be a double-edged sword; the right group of friends may provide just the stimulus you need to metamorphosis into a butterfly from a caterpillar. However, the wrong influence may impact you for the worse.

You may feel quite perplexed when you find your friends giving you the cold shoulder whenever results day comes around the corner. Instead of being genuinely happy for your academic success, they act distant towards you and ignore you. This may be familiar to some of you and you may have been hurt repeatedly due to this, left in a state of confusion whenever you are treated coldly.

When you perform poorly, some of them may even attempt to apply the herd mentality when providing you with so-called comfort: “Don’t worry, we’re all in this together. I failed too! What’s so good about getting A’s anyway? Those people are nerds who spend all their time studying. At least we have a life.”

Sounds familiar? Some of you may have heard this before from your friends. Sorry to burst your bubble but this is not the kind of advice and influence you want to have in your life in your preparations for the most important examination you will sit for in your entire life. Good friends should motivate one another to achieve the best they can, while they should take failures in their stride and should see failures in a positive light, they should not put failures on a pedestal. Friends who are mature and level-headed will take school examinations seriously and see them as stepping stones in preparation for the final paper.

Sometimes, you may fear being left out from your flock and may try to appease your friends, even if it means sacrificing time for studies or intentionally doing badly so that you can fit in better. You fear being classified as one of the nerds and fear being jeered at if you perform well while your friends fail to do so. You accept initiations for outings after schools and late-night dinners even though you know better and know that you need the time to consolidate your learning or spend more time on a subject you are weak at. Eventually, before you know it, your work snowballs and you find yourself bending over from the heavy burden that lies upon your shoulders.

You should not have to fear missing out on social activities or being cast aside. Good friends should understand your need to balance your time properly and understand if you need to devote more time to studying, especially if you lack a natural flair for studies and need to spend more time on new information before you properly absorb it. They should be able to see the big picture and recognise what is truly important. They should be able to acknowledge what is good for you and not feel jealousy when their friend performs well or obtains an achievement. They should be able to wholeheartedly support their friend in endeavours that are of benefit. Good friends should encourage each other when they are feeling down or when either of them have lost the motivation to study, be it due to friendship or family issues, or just being burnt out from chugging along for so many days in a row.

Your friends can help you for the subjects you are weak in, and in return, you can help them in the subjects they are weak in so that you both will yield better results. While toxic competition that demoralizes should be cut out, healthy competition should be encouraged. Healthy competition is when two people are able to root each other on without being a negative influence on each other in any way, be it making derisive remarks or jeering each other for doing better than the other.

So where does JC Maths come into play? If you are struggling at JC Maths, you can ask your friends who perform well in JC Maths for tuition recommendations. Naturally, some individuals may be uncomfortable with sharing where they go for tuition and may not want to see their peers fare better than them. Good friends, however, will not hesitate to share their JC Maths Tuition with their peer, especially if they themselves feel that they have a good JC Maths Tuition teacher and a friend they value and treasure could stand to benefit from attending the same JC Maths Tuition as them.

Instead of seeing their friend as competition, they will rejoice at being able to share yet another lesson (if they are classmates in Junior College) with their good friend and learn alongside with their friend. Typically, tuition classmates do not talk to each other as there is rarely an opportunity to interact with their classmates. Students usually drop in and out of JC Maths Tuition classes and tuition teachers usually discourage conversations, fearing that it will disrupt the pace of the class. After all, lessons are paid and there is a limited time slot for each class, especially if there are consecutive classes or the room is booked after the class is over. Thus, tuition teachers have to be focused on the day’s agenda and cannot afford distractions in class.

You may personally dread going for tuition classes and being in a cold, unfamiliar environment. Hence, you may find that having a friend you’re comfortable with will make the experience an even more relaxing one and that you are actually more engaged during lessons. You have someone to consult about tuition homework and you can ask your friend for help if you’re confounded by a particular JC Maths Tuition question. You will be able to work out the question with your friend and clarify doubts with one another. Together with your friend, you can consolidate questions to ask your JC Maths Tuition teacher after lesson is over or schedule a consultation with him another day, one that you can both attend together. As a result, a lot of time is saved as you can first clarify with each other about your uncertainties, before going to your JC Maths Tuition teacher with the harder questions. You may even find yourself looking forward to lessons, since you will have little snippets of time before and after lessons with your friend, be it walking to class together or walking to the MRT after the lesson is over. You may find that your friend’s company is just the one you need as a motivation towards working hard for ‘A’ Levels and that you two can be of support to one another for other subjects besides JC Maths.

So the next time someone asks you for a recommendation for JC Maths Tuition, do not be afraid to reach out to offer them advice or a helping hand. The peers learning alongside you are not your only competitors for the ‘A’ Level examinations looming ahead. There are many other Junior Colleges besides your own and private candidates to compete with as well. Instead of seeing your peers as rivals, you can see them as people to work together with towards a common goal!