10th July 2012 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Laura was away for three days last week, so I was dealing with all of the admin, and I’ve said before that I really don’t enjoy those things. I think the thing I enjoy least is making phone calls. Receiving them is fine, but I always feel like I’m interrupting someone’s life when I call them. To be honest, this isn’t just restricted to work, I feel a little like that even when I call friends. There always seems to be an element of surprise when someone picks up the phone, because they’re not prepared for whatever I’m about to ask.
Anyway, things feel as though they’re ticking along quite nicely at the moment. We’re now into the quietest time in terms of lessons being tutored, so there are fewer fires to put out on a daily basis, and I’m properly able to focus on improving our system ready for next for August, when we’ll begin to be inundated with tuition requests. I had hoped to redesign the form that new students complete when requesting a tutor. The idea is to shorten the form so that students need only enter the absolute essentials, and then have a second page asking for further details. The idea is to encourage more students to complete the essential information (I think they’re sometimes put off by the length of our current form), but also allow students to give us far more detail if they want to. The barrier to this at the moment is my categorisation of the subjects, which needs to be completed first. It really has been a massive job, but I’m hopeful that by the end of July it will be complete....although I’ve said something like that before.