Amateur tutoring

I've heard it been said many times that one of the best ways to learn is to teach. Sometimes I wonder if anything I've learnt in my undergrad degree has actually sunk into my brain for me to recall later in life. From experience, I've found that even if the details (big or small) haven't sunk in, the fact that I've learnt it once before helps me to understand it a second time around. So even though I don't feel as though I've retained that much knowledge, the three years of undergrad were absolutely worthwhile. 

Human biology, physiology and pathology have been all I've known for the past 4 years of uni and so when my friend told me that she was doing a physiology unit for the first time ever, I totally jumped on the idea of helping her understand some of the concepts she was finding difficult. It was a total win-win situation because it would help her, and it would be awesome to refresh my memory too. 

We covered oxidative phosphorylation, substrate-level phosphorylation, the Kreb cycle (aka the Citric acid cycle) and a whole bunch of other things all related to carbohydrate metabolism. Even though I had only briefly touched on these during my undergrad degree, I found that it was quite easy to understand having done so much physiology and being exposed to similar mechanisms and a lot of the terminology the books used. 

I've never done anything close to tutoring a person in what I've previously studied because I've never thought that I have sufficient knowledge. If I didn't have this mission to try something new each day I may not have had the confidence to give her some tutoring, but we both really benefited from tonight. Seeing my friend's face light up after understanding a concept she didn't before gave me a whole new level of confidence.