After my freshman year of highschool, I decided to take an online Latin class for my foreign language credit instead of taking the Spanish class which was offered at my school. The class itself was not too bad, but I quickly fell behind because I was busy with other classes, and there was a disconnect in communication between my teacher and the individual students in my class. I’m not sure if it was a problem for everyone, but it definitely proved to be a problem for me. My grade dropped and I got frustrated and stressed with the class in general. Towards the end of the class my family and I realized that I was not going to be able to pass unless I found a new way to get my work done. I tried to develop new study tactics on my own, which worked for me in other subjects, but it seemed like nothing was working for me in Latin, and I was running out of time. Luckily, there is a guidance counsellor at my school who’s wife is a Latin teacher, and she agreed to tutor me. We started off working together once a month, and my grades started improving, but then I needed to prepare for the final exam, so we ended up meeting once a week. She was a very good teacher and helped a lot in catching me up to the rest of the class, figuring out how to make me understand what was happening with the Latin grammar, and making the Latin culture make more sense. I passed the exam and ended up with a B in the class! I was blessed to have such a good tutor, but I definitely learned a lot from the experience outside of the Latin. I learned that the first time I struggle with a subject I need to find a better way to get things done so that I don’t fall behind, and that it is okay to ask for help because grades are important and it’s hard to make up for lost time in a class.
