What to do if you don't understand your homework

Everyone has been there; you're sitting at your desk, read a particularly tricky question and suddenly the entire page blends together! Before you panic, remember that you have so many people to support you!

First, please don't rip out the page (or pages) of work that are difficult and hope that your tutor won't notice; we ALWAYS do! And definitely don't use white-out either! It's creative but we would rather that creativity go into writing imaginative pieces!

Another tempting way around that unfortunately most students seem to jump to is to use AI to solve it for them and hand it in to their tutor. While it 'helps' in the short-term, in the long run when you're given much harder questions that build on the original one you will be very overwhelmed and stressed out!

Instead, go for a walk, have a snack and clear your mind for a short while. Then, go back and have another try at the questions, highlighting any necessary information or drawing any needed diagrams. If you're still stuck, try finding which part of the question is confusing you the most, and put a circle around it and bring it to us!

Bring the homework to your next tutoring session! Your tutor isn't expecting perfection, that's what we are here to help move towards! But we do want to see an actual attempt and effort put in; you can't just bring back the blank homework and say you didn't understand any of it! Because the homework would've been related to the work of your previous session! As a tutor, hearing "I don't understand" or "It was a bit confusing" makes me so much happier than seeing a paragraph answer for a question that needs a single number!

Homework isn't a test to see how well you can 'larp' school; it is an opportunity to work out what you need to focus on more next!