Meggie Macdonald

This summer, I had the great opportunity of being employed as a private tutor to a 14-year-old boy in Huntsville, Ontario.

I had responded to an advert on the Toronto Star website requesting, simply, a resume from someone interested in being a tutor.  A few days later, I received an email from the boy’s father who asked for a telephone interview at my earliest convenience.  When I rang him (from my British mobile in my boss’ office, no less!), he told me that he was looking for someone to tutor his son on Roman Emperors and asked if it was something I would be interested in.  I think my enthusiasm won him over, but I may also have been the only one with even close to the right qualifications to do the job.

So, in mid-August, I flew home to Canada to take up this position.  I had no idea what to expect and took along every book I could think of that could come in handy (a medium-sized box, weighing about 20-30 pounds), along with the notes that I had started writing up the day I got the job.  I met my student, who seemed quiet and a little shy, had breakfast and got right down to it.  My student seemed comfortable with the routine; I was later to find out that he is home-schooled, and has a new tutor every week (apart from language tutors).

Day the First:  TERRIBLE.  I was not only disorganised, but also entirely incoherent and managed to screw up the explanation of how the Republican period culminated in the Civil Wars and the Principate, and how each influenced the other.  My student was very quiet and very good, considering I was making no sense.  When I finally asked him if he understood was I was saying, he shook his head and that was it.  Uh oh, I thought; must correct this ASAP.  That night, I sat in my room and worked like a crazy person.  I summarized what I MEANT to get across that first day, and then had notes prepared that walked me through the second day’s material step-by-step.  I even noted a couple of primary sources in translation from my books to use.  John Buchan was the best source of all, because he was so poetic and adept at describing what went on culminating in the supremacy of Augustus.  My student had spent the previous week learning English literature, and was particularly enthralled by Shakespeare, so I was able to bring some of Antony and Cleopatra into the story I was going to tell on the second day.

Day the Second:  This day went significantly better than the first.  I now know that Matthew Clarke was right – have the lecture in front of you; that way, unless you spontaneously become unable to read, nothing can go wrong.  That and it’s hard to mess up the Civil Wars, Caesar, Antony and Octavian, especially when your student is a fourteen year old boy.  John Buchan was read aloud, Suetonius was read aloud, and we talked about the reality versus the fantasy of Antony and Cleopatra, their end, and what it means when a Roman ‘falls on his sword’.  I felt much better about how I had delivered the material, mostly because today my student started asking questions, but was still not willing to go to bed that night without a Day Two Summary and Day Three’s lecture ready to go.

Day the Third:  My favourite day – we talked about the emperors from the death of Augustus to the Flavians, the Judaean-Roman War, all the gossip in Suetonius and had a wonderful time.  I asked my student to read Suetonius’ life of Titus and of Otho; the first to find out why the Roman people loved him so much (we were both stumped), and the second because I felt it was important for him to read about how violent the Year of the Four Emperors was.  He commented on the visceral nature of Suetonius’ description of Otho’s demise and, I think, was a little put off.  These were also the two shortest lives and I had come to realise that there was only so much my student was willing to read in one sitting.  I came away from that day with a solid lecture that I was proud of.  It was this day that I decided I would type up my lectures for future use and include pictures, excerpts, and whatever else I had used that day to interest my student in the material.

Day the Fourth:  much less interesting material, but we found a way around that.  I was given a respite when my employer came in for a quick test of what my student had taken in.  I was amazed at how much this boy had been able to retain – not verbatim, but pretty close – and how he had been able to summarize some rather complex concepts (such as the relationships during the Civil Wars) that would cow some third year undergrad students!  I think his father was impressed as well, which really made me feel confident that I could actually teach this stuff.  It was an exhausting bit of a test, however, so the rest of the afternoon was pretty light.  My student was fascinated by the list that I had compiled of the Crisis of the Third Century.  I had intended to get him to map out the changes in power throughout the period, since I had found it so very helpful to understand how power shifted from Rome to Gaul to Illyria, coming to rest with Diocletian.  Instead, he read through the list and murmered his entertainment at the murdered, murdered, murdered repetition of the list.  He even showed it to his dad.

Day the Fifth - the last day, and my summing up point.  For the record, this fourteen year old was absolutely fascinated by a letter that a fourteen-year-old Marcus Aurelius had written to his tutor, so I will use it often because of that first enthusiastic reception.  We finished the material early.  I asked him to tell me one thing about each emperor as I listed them off – I would have given him about a 60% at that point, but since he survived his father’s test with such impressive skill, I let it go.  And then we were done!

I found the whole experience absolutely fascinating, very humbling, and pushed my creativity level to such an unusual point.  For the first time, after a double major undergrad and an intensive graduate degree, I had to simplify the material without losing any of its richness.  I found that I had this same problem when I was doing the copy for the Royal Ontario Museum, because it was so terribly important to me that the material should stay interesting without being so complex that it was impenetrable.  I had to draw on primary sources that I had read maybe once before during a boring second year class and remember everything that had been said by the prof or suggested by the students.  I had to look at the translation and know the structure of the original latin to be able to relay what the original author was saying and how the translator was saying it (something that, as a multi-lingual student, he found somewhat interesting – particularly when dealing with religious texts in the third, fourth and fifth centuries AD).  I had to keep it moving, rather than drone on and on about each topic, to break up talking with reading and discussion.  And I had to think about my student – what his interests were, what was on his mind, and how to get him to talk to me and ask me questions about what I think is the most fascinating story in the world. 

My reward?  On the last day, my student asked me:  “What did the Romans laugh about?”