aptitude > effort or trying or crap

i just attended the most boring "training session" in my life. i'm in the process of becoming an SAT tutor for summit sat prep. my saturday, 9am - 3pm, gone. not to mention the 30-40 minute drive each way.

the session was tolerable. out of the six, i was the only one without a graduate degree. one person had a masters in business, two had masterses in public health - THREE if you count the teacher of the session (why? what were they thinking?), one a masters in english, and one had a law degree. yet, i still felt like the smartest person there. i'm almost certain i was. a lot of them had trouble with simple arithmetic (they're teaching the verbal only), and they all took forever to do the annoying little practice exercises in our training coursebook. and one kept asking inane questions concerning the worst possible scenarios that could come up. i think she is expecting all of her tutees and their parents to be formed of the blackest black evil.

i'm also now officially an LSAT tutor for ltsprep, a company based in New York but with a nation-wide client base. i taught my first session with my first student on friday. not very hard. i just explained a bunch of the games to him.

i'm also signed up for the educator licensure examination in massachusetts. i like the idea of teaching high school subjects. being very qualified for something for a change feels pretty good. the exam is on the auspicious september 11, so i'll be back in longmeadow around that weekend.
i love feeling smart again. going to columbia and skipping classes and missing problem sets can make a student feel less than quality. remembering that i'm 98% in math and 99% in verbal and 99% in the lsat are very nice reminders that i have so far squandered my natural talents in life. well, the whole squandering part isn't so nice, i suppose, but the smart thing is.