Biography

I’ve been passionate about science and math for as long as I can remember; my family used to joke that I would become a mathematician before I even knew what the word meant. I enjoyed both subjects so much that I couldn’t decide which field to pursue in college. So, after completing high school in northern Virginia, I decided, “Why not both?” I earned dual bachelor’s degrees in physics and math from 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 hadn’t known existed. I became enamored not just with science and math, but with all subjects and the process of learning itself.

While I never had tutors as a child, in college I eagerly signed up to become one after meeting others as passionate about education as I was. During those four years, I primarily taught physics and math, occasionally assisting with chemistry or SAT preparation. I then worked in physics at Los Alamos National Laboratory, but later enrolled in physics graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. In the PhD program, I honed my teaching skills while working with hundreds of students across a dozen classes. Teaching everything from introductory courses for freshmen to advanced courses for seniors, I gained a lot of insight into how students think differently from one another. This helped me improve as an educator and earned me an award as an Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor.

As education became one of the most fulfilling parts of my career, I expanded my tutoring reach to include students in high school and middle school. I now regularly prepare students for both the English and Math sections of tests like the SAT and ACT. My primary goals during tutoring include fostering intuition and nurturing curiosity. I adapt tutoring sessions to each student effectively by paying attention to the student’s unique needs. While I find it immensely rewarding to witness a student’s “light bulb” moment when they grasp a challenging topic, nothing pleases me more than listening to a student who is becoming intrinsically excited about a subject through long-term tutoring.

Beyond education, I enjoy learning about different periods of history and have recently taken up writing as a hobby. I tend to immerse myself fully in new nerdy activities like chess, reading fiction, or learning music.