Lucas

Certified Tutor

I am currently in my 4th year of studies in chemistry and mathematics at the University of Victoria. I struggled in math and, well honestly, in school in general throughout my entire adolescence, until ultimately completing my high-school education as a young adult. Through my personal academic experience and tutoring over ten years, I've come to understand, early on, that success in math has little to do with one's own perceived intelligence, and more to do with extraneous factors. In other words, our environment and emotional relation to a subject play a key role in determining our personal success. As such, my key philosophy is to create a comforting environment in which it is okay to be wrong and to explore the subject. Specifically, in math, students will get wrong answers... a lot... and that's perfectly okay, in fact, it's necessary! It's how we go about maintaining our confidence and our perseverance to, not only get the correct answer but to deepen our understanding of the material that's important. As such, my approach is to generally work on foundational skills and core understanding and gradually build upon the complexity. I like to take a very visual approach to mathematics, wherein we develop the skills over time to move mathematical objects in our minds and then represent them back on a sheet of paper. It was my high-school math teacher that helped instill the confidence in me to do well in what is considered the hardest of subjects, and as a tutor, my goal is to help others gain confidence likewise in themselves. Furthermore, if the confidence gained in math tutorials can lend itself to other academic, or non-academic areas, all the better. Thank you for taking the time to read my personal statement, I'd like to end with a piece of general maths advice: remember, math is just imaginary garbage on a piece of paper, there is nothing to fear.