When you examine the details of my test-taking though, I find it hard to conceptualize beyond the curriculum for which I’m learning; Meaning cumulative exams are a struggle for me. What I’ve learned this semester especially, however, is that the critical part of the clause “a struggle for me” eliminates any notion of it being a larger systemic problem. Students learn at different rates, and the pacing of high school may have been compatible for my own pacing, but it wasn’t for others. 

Coming to UC Berkeley and pursuing a degree in Economics I became the “other,” unable to keep up with the speed of Mathematics classes. My ultimate goal, therefore, is to create a space where tutoring takes place for students that is specifically adjacent to the course they are taking. 

Therefore, if I were to create an environment conducive to academic success, I would create a site where class notes can be shared, and students who feel successful in the class have direct access to help individuals who feel less entitled to claim confidence. 

In the long term, however, UC Berkeley may join a number of colleges who are disintegrating on their principle of learning: to create students who have both the ability and confidence to be successful. If students cannot properly learn, they cannot properly apply the teachings that are so coveted here. We may become a school where the degree is meaningless in everything but name - an extreme take but a plausible future nonetheless. If students are not given the degree of help for which they require, then classes will only begin to count toward their units instead of their understanding.

The reality is that now that the external employment force is looking for candidates that go above and beyond expectations, Berkeley students must take this not as a challenge but as an opportunity. We need to become  a force for high quality individuals and set standards for work and application that we directly gain from learning at the University. 

With a wave of health-inclusive naturalization we need to realize that the aforementioned expectation can only be achieved if students are learning at appropriate rates.

1. Average grade improvement based on past classes (which may now serve as a control group)

1. The scores and average grades of past classes may now serve as a platform by which to measure the distance of improvement. With the help of this service, it would be projected that averages of class scores would improve. 

2. Feedback 

1. We all whine about the unending pile of surveys we have to take, but from a qualitative perspective this evidence is possibly the most empirical, and people are more likely to respond to surveys under the pretense that the service was actually beneficial to them.

The site, furthermore, may appear to just be an extension of the services offered from the Student Learning Center, but the environment induced for hands-on learning, running concurrently with students' own schedules will allow them to both expand socially and academically. 

As 40% of the undergraduate population utilizes the services employed by the SLC it's imperative that those resources be extended to class specific instruction, not merely the question-answer model taken up by the Center. With the site running on a peer oriented, curriculum based format the percent of students seeking help will be better distributed so nearly half the undergraduate student body will continue to overwhelm the Peer and Professional tutors belonging to the SLC.  

Change doesn’t seem imperative as currently there is no physical consequence for the overconsumption of SLC employees, however, the use and perpetual occupation of the tutor’s time will only eventually lead to their decay. They further attempt to hire twice per semester without avail and this is an additional sign that there needs to be a secondary resource, like the site I propose so pieces of the responsibility land back on students.