From 2 Minutes to 2 Hours

When I was young, every student at my school got a turn on stage. Each week, someone new walked up to the podium and spoke for two minutes on a topic they'd been given. Two minutes doesn't sound like much, but back then it felt like the whole world.

You could learn a lot about people from those two minutes. Some walked up nervously, clutching their scripts close to their hearts like a shield. Others went up on pure confidence and rattled off whatever thoughts were sitting at the top of their heads.

I loved it. I loved standing behind the podium and hearing my voice carry through the mic. I liked making eye contact with the rows of faces and delivering every line with care.

But after two minutes, the aura would dim. The boldness would leave me; I'd walk back to my seat, and I'd return to being just… normal me.

 

University has its own version of the stage, just in a different shape. Now it's vivas: a one-on-one discussion where you fight for your marks, then face follow-up questions that fry your brain completely. There's no podium to stand behind and no script to clutch; just you, an examiner, and everything you think you know.

The longest I had ever spoken in one go was twenty minutes. I honestly never thought I'd get the chance to speak for longer than that.

Then I started tutoring.

 

Now I have two hours and more than twenty people to engage. Not two minutes. Two hours.

Becoming a tutor is a bittersweet moment for me because, as a little kid, I wanted to be a teacher. I remember rounding up everyone at home and making them sit and obey me while I played teacher. I'm not sure how much they enjoyed it, but I certainly did.

Now I get to do it for real.

Tutoring is like seeing the show from backstage. As a student, you only see the finished performance: the lecture, the slides, the tutorial questions. On the other side, I finally see how lectures are prepped and how what we're taught actually takes shape.

 

My first tutorial was on a Thursday, and I was nervous. I took time to press my shirt and tie my hair up in a neat bun. I even thought about wearing zero-power glasses just plain lenses without prescription. Just to look a bit more like someone who belonged at the front of the room.

The truth is, I was scared of being outed as an imposter. I really like the subject I tutor, but a small, scared voice always echoes in the back of my head: you're not good enough.

And my students aren't family members humouring a little kid at home. Some of them are older than me, and some are probably much wiser. I really wanted to make a good impression.

 

In that first tutorial, I learned one thing fast: two hours is a very long time indeed.

And boy, the hydration this job needs. I felt parched every fifteen minutes. Now I finally understand why professors stop mid-lecture to drink water. It isn't a dramatic pause; speaking for that long is genuinely exhausting.

The bigger lesson came later, when I replayed the session in my head. I had been telling too much. I know the course, but my students don't, not yet.

For them, every piece of information is new, and new information needs time to sink in. I wasn't giving them any buffer time. I was just overloading them, one concept after another.

It's a strange thing to realise: knowing a subject well can make you worse at explaining it, because you forget what it felt like not to know it.

 

The sacrifices of Thursday's tutorial made me better equipped for Friday. By the second class, I already knew which questions would come up and where to give the due pause so an idea could land.

That made me reflect on my own tutors. Some of them seem to know everything; others look a bit confused. Now I realise some of them might simply be taking the first tutorial of the week.

It's not that the tutor knows less. It's that they're still unsure how much the students already know, and where the gaps are. It takes that first run to make the next one better.

I'll definitely be a little kinder to first-tutorial-of-the-week tutors from now on.

 

I've also realised just how nervous grading day makes students. I know that feeling well. But as a grader, I simply go with the flow and help the student move through their viva.

I raise or lower the level of my questions based on how they're answering. If someone is confident, I push a little further; if they're struggling, I step it back and give them room to find their footing.

It's weird, and a little strange, to be on the other side of the table.

 

Some days I genuinely feel like I'm living a double life. I've walked out of my own viva for one subject and gone straight into taking another student's viva for the subject I tutor. One hour I'm the one being questioned; the next, I'm the one asking.

Being a tutor also keeps teaching me things about the subject that I missed as a student. Explaining a concept to a room full of people, and fielding their questions from every angle, shows you exactly where your own understanding had gaps.

As part-time jobs go, it's a good one. It's taught me that the line between a student and a teacher will always be thin.

Because a good teacher is always ready to learn.