Daniel Gardeazabal

I’ve been fond of science and math ever since I was young. My family joked that I’d be a mathematician before I even knew what that word meant! By the time I finished high school in Virginia, I knew I wanted to continue studying as much math as I could. Therefore, I decided to pursue a dual degree in both physics and math at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As the first member of my family to graduate from college, each day exposed me to a world of academia that I didn’t know existed. I became enamored by not just the subjects of science and math, but by the process of learning and education itself.

I’d never had any experiences with tutors when I was a kid, but I immediately signed up to become a tutor in college after I met educators who were as passionate about education as I was. I taught students primarily in physics and math throughout undergrad. Though I later worked in physics at Los Alamos National Laboratory, I missed being around students that I could teach. I decided to continue my education, and enrolled in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley where I majored in physics. While there, I honed my teaching skills by working with hundreds of students across a dozen classes. My experience with students in introductory classes taught me how they think differently from students who have studied a subject in depth for many years. This insight allowed me to improve as an educator and even helped me earn an award as an Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor.

As education became one of the most fulfilling parts of my career, I expanded my private tutoring reach to include students in high school and middle school. One of my primary goals while tutoring a student is to foster their intuition and expand their inquisitive nature. I find it immensely rewarding to watch a light bulb turn on in a student’s head when they grasp a challenging topic. I do my best to pay attention to a student’s needs during tutoring sessions so I can adapt to each student’s unique learning style. Nothing pleases me more than to observe how a student becomes more and more eager to talk about what they’ve learned as the weeks pass by.

Outside of education, I like learning about different periods of world history, and I’ve recently started to write fiction as a hobby. I also tend to become really invested in any new nerdy activity I pick up, such as playing chess, reading fantasy stories, or learning music.