Helping One Student At a Time by Sakeem

Helping One Student At a Time by Sakeem - December 2019 Scholarship Essay

Hi, my name is Sakeem Griffin. I’m currently a freshman at the University of Cincinnati. I volunteer to tutor students with their English, math, and history work at my old high school.
How’s has tutoring affect me because it helped me realize that everyone is unique. Everyone learns different, and everyone has different personalities. When I start tutoring it was boring. All I did was help students with their work and went home. Weeks later I start being more outgoing and initiating the conversation. Doing so I “Broke Out of My Shell.” This lead to me being more outgoing, I didn’t want to make this about me, but I asked a girl out and fortunately, she said yes! She’s now my girlfriend by the way.
Besides being more outgoing, tutoring lead to me being more patient. I’ve always learned faster than my peers so I would get annoyed when students would constantly ask questions about work that I had no problem doing. I just thought that the person didn’t pay attention or didn’t try hard enough, but the truth was that people just learn differently from others. I now understand this and wish I could apologize to everyone I made fun of for it.
In conclusion, tutoring did many wonders for me. It lead to me being more social, having my first girlfriend and being more empathic. Looking back I took on the tutoring role for college credit, but honestly, I would take on the role with or without incentives now knowing how much it changed my life.