Abraham Chan (UCL)

As cliché as it sounds, Mr. Fisher was to me like a ray of light in the dark, a lighthouse cutting through the fog of Economics. When I met him, I had no idea what was going on in my economics lessons at school. I always felt behind the other students, and no matter how hard I tried, I continued to do poorly. I would constantly search Google for study websites, hoping to improve myself, but it was to no avail. Having done Latin for my GCSEs, I was confident that nothing the A-Level exam board could throw at me could be confusing. I was so wrong.

The mix of macroeconomics and microeconomics did not make sense to me at all. The various diagrams melted into one another, and I often found myself half-guessing whenever I had to complete prep or a worksheet from my schoolteacher. He maintained a ranking list that consistently tracked our prep performance from the very first piece at the start of Lower Sixth right up to the mock exams at the end of Upper Sixth. He would publicly disclose our marks during class, which had me feel slightly embarrassed whenever I got a bad grade. This led me to try to copy answers online, never truly understanding what I was writing.

I continued like this until the Easter holiday of my Lower Sixth term, when I was revising for my predicted grade exams. I realized I had no idea what the course was even about. I began to deeply regret taking Economics as an A-Level, fearing it would jeopardize my chances of getting into law school. While I was never one to slack off in my studies—having achieved 9s and 8s in my GCSEs—I grew increasingly unmotivated and discouraged by the subject.

I tried to find tutors online. After going through three of them over the Easter break, I found them to be incredibly mediocre; none had a passion for the subject or an expert grasp of exam technique and strategy. Some were university students from prestigious schools who hadn't looked at the syllabus in years, while others were tutors completely unfamiliar with the exam board yet marketed themselves as experts. They would often simply download a note packet from Save My Exams or PMT and claim to have written it themselves.

Leading up to the predicted grade exams, I tried my best to cram a year’s worth of knowledge—of which I had absolutely no grasp—into my head. With the help of a few EconplusDal videos, I barely scraped a B.

I was devastated. There was no possible way I could apply to any law school with A*, A*, B as my predicted grades. Luckily, there was an opportunity to redeem myself. My schoolteacher said that if I worked hard over the summer, I could take another predicted exam in late September.

Over the summer, I kept having lessons with the same mediocre tutors. I began to grasp certain concepts that I had missed during the school year, but it was only to a very elementary level. The lessons themselves often felt amateurish, as if the tutors were teaching for the first time. But I didn't realize it at the time because I didn't know any better.

By late August, I realized I was making little to no progress and decided to make a last-ditch effort to find another tutor. I remember telling my mum, "Keep the other tutors for now" (I had two at the time—I was quite desperate), "I'll give this next one a trial lesson and we'll see how it goes."

Then came Mr. Fisher. Our first lesson was in early September of my final year. I remember ending the Skype call and thinking to myself, "Wow, now THIS is how a tutor should be." I immediately fired the other two tutors. 

 Even from our first lesson, he had an air of professionalism about him that was also strangely welcoming; I felt immediately at ease. He went through the entire syllabus with me, identified my pain points, and discussed a strategy to target them before my exam. Mr. Fisher has a unique skill for dissecting complicated economic theories and diagrams into simple, digestible parts. He also laid out a clear strategy and sent me documents on how to approach the 2, 4, 9, 15, and 25-mark questions for both micro and macro, as well as the multiple-choice section. No one had ever explained it so clearly—not even my schoolteacher, who would often veer off-topic and start talking about his love for Manchester United. When answering economics questions, I used to be lost, spewing everything I knew in the hope of securing a few marks. After that lesson, I felt more confident in how to approach them. The fog began to clear.

Over the course of the month leading to my second predicted exams, we went through diagram after diagram, essay after essay. This work raised my score from a low B to somehow scraping the A* boundary. Even my schoolteacher was surprised by the rapid improvement. I was ecstatic. This meant I could now apply to the top law schools in the country with a fighting chance, holding three A* predictions. I was amazed at the difference one teacher could make. In the short span of a month, I went from not understanding the subject and feeling frustrated to having a decent grasp of both the content and the exam structure. This gave me a newfound sense of confidence and the realization that an A* in Economics might not be unattainable after all.

From then until the final A-Level exam, Mr. Fisher and I went through every possible past paper question and essay type. We eventually compiled a Google Doc that exceeded 250 pages by the time I sat my first exam, not even counting the stacks of multiple-choice question banks we practiced. We worked to the point where I could look at an exam paper and immediately have an essay plan in mind without needing to pause and think. Mr. Fisher was incredibly patient throughout the entire year, explaining concepts I found hard to grasp over and over again until I had a solid understanding. He made sure to knuckle down on areas where I constantly made mistakes until they became second nature. I went from second from the bottom of the class to the top over the course of the year. I went from constantly going to my housemate's room to ask to copy his homework to having them come to my room to ask for economics help. It was a complete 180.

Mr. Fisher brought the subject to life. Initially, I always had the impression that Economics was a dull and boring subject all about supply and demand. Through my lessons with Mr. Fisher, I found his passion for the subject contagious. I began to genuinely enjoy it and actively read about updates on issues I found interesting. I am reminded of the quote by William Butler Yeats: "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." It truly reflects the impact Mr. Fisher's passion had on me.

I must also thank Mrs. Fisher (and their cat) for being incredibly accommodating. Given that I had to balance an already demanding school schedule, I often had no free time and had no choice but to "borrow" him occasionally on the weekends.

When I walked into the exam hall to sit my first exam, I was still slightly nervous—economics was the first A-Level paper I would sit. When the time started, I flipped open the paper and a smile came to my face. The essay topics he had predicted, drawing from his wealth of experience with the course and the exam board, all came up. We had already planned out the essays during our lessons. I breezed through the essays and multiple-choice questions. Thanks to the stringent time management Mr. Fisher had drilled into me and his exam strategy, I had 35 minutes left at the end to review the entire paper and check for mistakes. This theme continued for the rest of my economics exams. After each exam, he always emailed me immediately to check how it went, to which I would excitedly reply, "THE EXACT ESSAY WE PLANNED CAME UP!"

When results day arrived and I saw that I had achieved 3 A*s, I immediately sent an email to Mr. Fisher to thank him. I felt incredibly grateful and lucky that I had met such an incredible, passionate, and experienced tutor who had raised my economics grade from a low B to a high A*.

As I write this, I am now a year into my legal studies at UCL. Upon reflection, it is astounding to think of the impact one good teacher can have on a student's life. Without Mr. Fisher, my dream of getting into law school would have been close to impossible. The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was right in saying, "A single conversation across a table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books." Had I silently powered on with the same mediocre tutors and my own efforts, I highly doubt I could have achieved the same results. So, to those of you who are considering having Mr. Fisher as a tutor, I would highly encourage you to do so.

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