Maria -- Tutoring 5 (TOEFL preparation)

Last tutoring session and last day before the test. Lu is sure she will not be able to score what she'd hoped for on the TOEFL. Sometimes that is how things are. Still, she's got to try her best. What she scores will make a difference in her plans for next year. I don't remember the actual numbers she gave me, but if she scores the higher one, she'll apply to go to graduate school, if the lower, she'll do one year as an undergraduate in the US in order to improve her English before taking the TOEFL again. From my perspective both options are good (I would not want to go to graduate school without sufficient knowledge of the language), but it is clear that Lu would like to make it to graduate school right away (for the -- arguably -- wrong reasons): it would make her parents proud and she is afraid of letting them down. Finances don't seem to be an issue here, so I point out that if she ends up having to do a year as an undergraduate it will only help her prepare better for graduate school: her English will be better and she'll be familiar with the way the system works. Lu lightens up a bit. This last tutoring session turns out to be more like a pep talk for a consolation price, than anything else; making Lu see the test as a measure of her level of English rather than this forbidding wall that is keeping her from entering graduate school paradise (just kidding). It is, nevertheless, hard to take a test when you know you won't do as well as you'd like. However, it is also good to know that it doesn't mean the end of your life... just quite yet ;).