Jared genuinely appeared to want to understand how to solve the problems he had missed on Friday. He started by being a tad argumentative (in a friendly way, though!) by saying he used 'his method' but was very quick to listen when I showed him how to actually work the problems. His main areas of uncertainty were three-variable systems (although we had worked on them quite a lot last week), mainly he insisted on trying to solve them in his head. I then realized he was hiding the fact that he wasn't all too sure of how to tackle the problems (substitution or elimination) ... so we reviewed the idea behind both methods, and he appeared to absorb what I was showing him. I had started class by giving him a bit of a pep talk, in the sense that I recognize his mental acuity when it comes to (especially) math, and that it's not something to be ashamed of (I used different, gentler words, but I don't remember them now!) if one doesn't immediately know how to tackle something - that's why we have learning. And the point of these problems is not so much to get the right answer (although that is important, too!) but it's to build a set of methodical analytical skills that can translate to all areas of life.