AI Assistance Report  

This comic introduces a short real-life story about emotions during a mathematics course in my last year of secondary school, in the context of private tutoring.

The comic begins by giving the story's overview, introducing the characters, as well as, the general background that aims to highlight the importance of performance and success in the national exams that take place in the end of the year.

At this point, it is also important to note that private tutoring in after-school hours in the last years of secondary school is a highly common practice in Greece. It is an established practice that is recommended for succeeding in the national exams.

Following the overview, a day in tutoring is illustrated. I, as the main character, used to experience a lot of anxiety inside the classroom, which is shown in the comic by the heart-rate spikes. I also used to constantly compare myself to my two classmates, Yiannis and Vasilis, who I thought were smarter and more capable than me in science.

These feelings of inferiority and stress, led to my non-motivation for studying, tiredness, extreme worry about my future and a state of disarray. That was, until I decided that I could not let the situation overcome me, I had to take action. My motivation was extrinsic, I wanted to outscore Vasilis who I thought was proximal to me in terms of skills and performance. I started putting more effort, I memorized formulas and was more active in class, answering questions. Finally, when I felt that I had reached my subgoal, I had feelings of relief and relaxation which, as shown in the comic, did not motivate me to push further.

In the last pages of the comic, a contradiction between a past and a future version of myself is made, with the former experiencing a wide range of emotions but not being able to explain them, and the latter being more aware of emotion and motivation processes in learning, and successfully creating the connections of personal experiences to theoretical concepts.