Helplessness is--the inability to speak up or rescue when action is needed. The student struggles with the same pages of music for almost a year, and it still sounds ragged. When does the Teacher tell him to call it quits, that his persistence is futile, that he was never meant to walk this path?  To continue to encourage and offer false hope is as hypocritical as lying to a terminally ill patient. Yet, speaking the bare truth either compounds the problem, or causes severe damage to the student's self worth. This sense of helplessness and agony weighs on the Teacher as a ton of bricks. God have mercy...