Lately I’ve been thinking about how much pressure students put on themselves to “get it” or simply understand things straight away. There’s this expectation that if you don’t understand something quickly, it means you’re behind or not good at it. However, most of the time it just means you haven’t spent enough time sitting with it yet.

Something I’ve noticed is how quick students are to give up the second something feels unfamiliar, not even hard, just unfamiliar. The moment it doesn’t look like what they’ve seen before, there’s this automatic reaction of “I can’t do this.” or “I’ve never seen a question like this before, how am I supposed to know?”. And once that mindset kicks in, it’s really hard to move forward.

What actually seems to help as a tutor is changing how we respond in that moment. Telling them, well what part of this do you recognise? What’s one small thing you can do here? It doesn’t have to be the full solution. Even just starting somewhere makes a difference.

I’ve also realised that confidence doesn’t come from always getting the right answer. It comes from knowing you can keep going even when you’re unsure. That feeling of working through something messy and eventually making sense of it sticks way more than getting something right straight away.

At the end of the day, getting better at something isn’t about avoiding mistakes or confusion. It’s about getting more comfortable with them. Once that shift happens, everything starts to feel a bit more manageable.

Lily Powell