Akila: Batavia tutor

Certified Tutor

I am in my third year at the University of Maryland in College Park, studying both Computer Science and Physiology & Neurobiology. I am currently working on research at UMD to develop an origami inspired, self-assembling clinic for combating coronavirus.

In grade school and even in college, other students often ask me questions during class for quick clarification instead of interrupting the teacher. The moment I realized that I was well suited for tutoring was when my middle school math teacher told me that she was so impressed with how much students improved in the class with my help that she wanted to put me next to a student who was struggling so that I could help him too. When students ask me questions, I have an ability to recognize what bits of information the student is missing or what the more appropriate question the student should be asking based on what he/she wants to know about (when you don't understand a topic, it can be difficult to ask the right questions).

What I love most about tutoring is that every once in a while I will see a student's face light up when a concept or idea we were discussing "clicks." It is an exciting moment for the student and he/she develops a better appreciation for the subject as a whole after understanding even just a small piece of it better. I love math and science and it gives me a warm feeling inside when I can help other students start to love math and science too.

I have the most formal tutoring experience in math (up to and including Algebra), but I can also tutor biology, chemistry, physics, and computer science (Java). I have had very little experience in tutoring writing, but a lot of my peers ask me to read and give comments or edits to their writing assignments which range from creative writing pieces to research papers and lab reports to graduate school application essays. While I do not tutor writing in the traditional sense, I do give a lot of comments which help the students improve the grammar, clarity, and complexity in their writing. Of all of these subjects, I think my favorite to tutor is math because that is the subject where students tend to have the least faith in themselves and I get to show them how interesting and fun math really is when you give it a chance.

Students who are confident in their abilities in a subject and/or are personally interested in the subject are the ones who do well in that subject, so my teaching philosophy is: don't teach the subject but teach a love of the subject. My tutoring style relies heavily on guiding the student through how to approach a problem. This breaks the problem into more manageable steps and makes it less intimidating.

Outside of academics I like going for quiet walks, playing piano, going horseback riding, building 3D-printed robots, and learning random factoids. Fun fact: octopuses can edit their own genes! (While we are on the subject, the plural of "octopus" is "octopuses" not "octopi" because the word comes from Greek not Latin.)