More About Me

I already covered the basics about my work in the introduction on the home page, but I know from experience that finding the right personality fit can also be an important factor for success, so I’ll tell you some more about me. One of the most common things people bring up when they talk about me is that I’m soft-spoken. Despite this, I will still talk your ear off if you bring up the right topics. I'm very patient and try to be flexible and lenient while still trying to inspire the best in others, and I always strive to become a better version of myself in terms of knowledge, skills, and character. It’s a never-ending journey, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’m sure that people are under the impression that my daily life revolves around math and science, but I do, in fact, have hobbies and interests outside of that. I’ve always had a natural interest in psychology and understanding the minds of others, so I tend to read books, listen to podcasts, or watch videos discussing these sorts of topics. I also watch anime and play video games (mostly platformers and puzzle games), although it’s a lot less than what it used to be. I usually work out 3-4 days a week, and since 2020, I’ve been slowly teaching myself Japanese, although I still have a long way to go on that front.

As for my personal goals, I’d like to become an independent game developer. I was actually beginning to teach myself pixel art in 2023, but have postponed those plans yet again because of continued interest in my tutoring services. Although I never want to completely quit tutoring, I did try to limit it, and the existence of this website is the result of me accepting that I’m needed more than ever. I suppose I’ll just have to find some other way to fit game development into my schedule… Apart from that, I’d like to eventually move to somewhere colder, get into gardening, become a better cook, and somehow make time for my long list of personal projects that never get done.

To conclude, I will describe my tutoring philosophy. Put simply, I encourage learning that is authentic and independent. I believe that getting a good grade has little to do with how much a student has actually learned about a subject, so I don’t focus on grades; I focus on making sure my students understand the ideas. This usually leads to an improvement in grades, but more importantly, the student is left with a learning experience that lasts. They may forget an equation or a constant after a few years, but they’ll always feel the concept of torque whenever they swing open a door, and they’ll remember some of the chemical nomenclature I taught them when trying to decipher the weird names of ingredients on the label of their cereal box.

More importantly, they will know how to be resourceful and take ownership of their learning. Getting help from me or another educator can speed things up when the matter is urgent, but even without that, they’ll know how to eventually learn things on their own from seeing my process over and over again. They’ll know how to deal with getting stuck because they’ll remember those moments where they saw how I handled being stuck (because I, too, can make mistakes and get stuck). And most importantly of all, they’ll know that though the path to long-term learning may be hard, getting in the habit of choosing short-term fixes is even harder.