Elizabeth: Riverdale tutor

Certified Tutor

I hold a Bachelor's degree in English from Columbia University, where I read and studied a wide variety of literature. As a lifelong theater lover, my primary focus was dramatic literature and theory; my other academic interests include children's books, early American literature, and the history of literary theory from antiquity to the present.
I tutor several subjects, including SAT prep, grammar and mechanics, study skills, and public speaking. But as someone who's often found the writing process agonizing, essay writing is the subject closest to my heart. I'm deeply sympathetic to any student who dreads sitting down to write an essay. English tutoring tends to attract people who have always enjoyed writing; they may find themselves stymied when faced with a student who has zero desire to write anything at all. I know firsthand how hard it can be to sit down and get words on the page, and over the years I've amassed an arsenal of ways to trick even the most recalcitrant student into writing a strong essay without having a nervous breakdown.
I'm also happy to help students who want to get more organized and sharpen their study skills. At Columbia, I spent several semesters as a note-taker for the Office of Disability Services; i.e., in several separate classes, my notes were selected as exemplary and distributed each week to students whose learning disabilities impaired their ability to take their own notes. I also spent two years working in a lawyer's office, where I became even more rigorously organized, systematic, and detail-oriented than I had been in school. To my mind, the key to organization is to create a system with enough structure that it can be applied to almost any situation. But at the same time, the system exists to serve you; if you spend more time organizing your work rather than actually doing it, you may need to incorporate a little wiggle room.
In my spare time, I enjoy reading, theater, yoga, and knitting.