About Me
I’m an experienced and accomplished tutor, communicator, and learner. I’ve worked with middle and high school students, as well as undergraduates at Yale and Princeton. I’m here to help determined students achieve their learning goals through focused, adaptive tutoring—whether those goals relate to an entrance exam you have to take, a class you need help in, writing you want to improve, or simply an area you want to learn more about.
How I Teach
What do I bring to the table? One foundational component of what I do is an extremely high level of competence in the things I teach, rooted both in experience and top-notch analytical skills. Most tutors have a limit in this regard which impacts how far they can help their students get. If I’m teaching it, I can do it.
But my ability to do the work myself is just a prerequisite to high-level teaching. What students appreciate most about me is that I am a careful listener who can intuit how a student is approaching a problem and help them work step-by-step to the right answer. Because I attend carefully to a student’s strengths and weaknesses, I can adapt my teaching as we go, leading to more focused sessions and to better outcomes for students.
Furthermore, I not only recognize how students are thinking but also respect their intellectual process and show that through the way I ask questions. This helps students build and maintain the confidence they need in order to strive for their learning goals. Whether in a one-on-one tutoring session or a college seminar, students learn better when they know their thoughts are being taken seriously.
Finally, let me say a bit about efficiency. A key part of graduate school is learning how to learn and teach efficiently, and I can use what I’ve learned to help you get to your goals on a meeting schedule that works for you (for SAT and SSAT testing, see my Intensive Prep option). I’m even integrating AI into my teaching process so that I can show highly motivated students (especially those on a budget) how to develop their knowledge and skills at their own pace.
See for yourself what students and parents have to say!
Background
Originally, I’m from Norfolk, VA, home of what I believe is the world’s first ice cream cone machine. We also have a AAA baseball team, which was a farm team for the Mets when I was growing up, so I often heard Sinatra’s “New York, New York” on summer evenings.
My school offered the chance to start taking the PSAT and SAT as early as 7th grade. I had always had a lot of pride in my math ability, but even so it took consistent practice for me to master the different types of questions the test threw at me. I soon earned a perfect score on the Math and, eventually, on the Reading and Writing (which were separate sections back then).
Then for eight years I lived in New Haven, CT, where I got a bachelor’s and then a master’s degree from Yale. By the time I took the GRE in 2017, I had a better idea of how to learn and prepare for a test, and I got a perfect score on my first try.
At the moment, I’m just a few months away from completion of my Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton, where I’ve spent years honing my spoken and written communication skills. My dissertation is on philosophical questions related to advances in physics.