Jack: South Gate tutor

Certified Tutor

I am a rising junior at Princeton University with an extremely academic background and a love for school. I attended Groton, a boarding school in Massachusetts for my high school years, and afterwards took a gap year, backpacking and working in South America for 9 months. During the first half of those months, I mountaineered with NOLS in Chilean Patagonia, and in the latter half I focused more on community service in Bolivia. Once at Princeton, I concentrated on the social sciences, moving away from my high school focus on math and science. I declared Politics as my major and am pursuing a certificate in Values and Public Life (a synthesis of Philosophy and Public Service).

I have tutored - albeit not in an official capacity - since I was in high school, volunteering to help out with younger kids who struggled with math and sometimes science subjects. I really enjoyed the opportunity to help other students, and there was something quite unique about successfully helping another person 'get it' - that moment when something clicks, a lightbulb goes off, and they understand something with which they might have struggled for a long time. This experience taught me the somewhat obvious fact that people learn in different ways, and getting to that moment of 'getting it' often required the trying of many different routes towards the same understanding. Once in college, I continued to tutor in a volunteer capacity, going to a nearby New Jersey Corrections Facility to tutor inmates ages 20-25 hoping to pass the GED. As well, I became an essay-writing tutor for my fellow classmates with Princeton's Writing Center, and I have continued to tutor at the high school level, helping local students with math and writing.