Nicholas

Certified Tutor

My name is Nicholas Epstein and I am currently going to college for Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University. I am an excellent tutor due to my solid organizational skills, strong ability to communicate clearly and break down concepts, and my extensive background in STEM. Through my course and project work, I have the requisite background to teach the skills and concepts fundamental to various STEM subjects, language arts and social studies subjects, and other disciplines. I am a patient teacher, and I love helping people to understand concepts more clearly for those "Aha!" moments. In order to facilitate a solid learning experience, I am willing to be flexible when it comes to scheduling and logistics so that I can create the best possible learning environment and consistently reinforce the information I impart.
In addition to this flexibility, I have a strong emphasis on systematic, organized teaching. In my own course work, I always make sure to have a long-term conceptual layout for the course or test I am studying for so that I fully understand the material. When I have help fellow students with course materials, this framework ensures that I always have a solid foundation of material to go over with them that covers all the relevant concepts and problem-solving methods. As a result, rather than scrambling to put together study materials, I can create an organized learning environment where concepts can be examined from multiple angles to build upon basic problem-solving and allow for a clearer understanding of the material.
My greatest skill when it comes to this higher-level understanding is my ability to break down concepts. I have often found that the best way to grasp a concept is to break it down until it can be described with basic, familiar terminology. Once that point is reached, one can more easily connect that concept to other related concepts, allowing for a better understanding of the subject material as a whole. I communicate clearly and concisely so that each concept can be walked through in an efficient, educational manner that allows for a strong conceptual understanding.
As I am currently pursuing an education in a very STEM-oriented field, my personal conceptual understanding of various concepts is constantly being expanded and built upon. As a result, I have a lot of experience to draw upon when explaining mathematical, scientific, and technological concepts. For example, one project I've worked on recently involves the construction, wiring, and programming of a small robot for the purpose of terrain navigation. The knowledge that this project drew upon extended from mathematical concepts of sets and matrices to physical concepts of electricity flow and balance to language concepts of proper technical report writing and grammar. As I am an actively engaged student myself, I understand the difficulties that come with learning complex concepts as well as many ways of overcoming them.