
Samuel
Certified Tutor
Not only does a solid grasp on physics allow one to obtain a useful intuition to help with furthering one's academic pursuits in almost any field, from engineering to biology, but it also allows for a development of a mature personality applicable to all areas of life by nurturing the growth of sound reason and logic, whose importance is no more emphasised than by today's information era.
Unfortunately, there a lot of teaching methods used by teachers and even university lecturers which can leave a student feeling unsatisfied in their understanding, mainly by drilling through mathematical equations without ever providing an intuitive baseline for what the abstract mathematical symbols mean. Although this methodology may work for some students, it is my own personal opinion that to solve a problem one must first understand everything about the problem. For example, you would not attempt to fix a car engine without knowing what each part does. In the same way, I believe that one ought to understand a subject before answering questions on it which will not only lead to better grades through a strong and flexible intuition of the underlying principles, but one will also find such a method more rewarding and memorable.
Admittedly, I never used this approach until I started my bachelor's degree at Swansea University which was around the same time I realised that a career in physics was what I wanted to do with my life, by becoming a professor and furthering our collective knowledge of the universe around us. One of the core parts of being a professor at a university is teaching students on the subject that the professor specialises in. This provides a mutual benefit to both the students, who learn the subject from the most knowledgeable experts in the field, and the professors too, as preparing comprehensive learning materials for students requires the professor to really solidify and extract their knowledge into its most basic components which can only be done with an impeccable understanding of the subject matter. As Richard Feynman put it: "If you want to master something, teach it" and he was speaking as one of the greatest physicists and teachers of his time testified by the fact that his theories and lectures are still immensely popular today despite being half a century old.
Hence, my goal is to follow in Feynman's advice by teaching physics to not only inspire more future physicists and help others get a grasp on the subject, but also to solidify my own knowledge in the subject as well.
Whilst this is my first formal experience in tutoring students, I do believe that my strong results through my academic career in physics, from an A in GCSE to a first class honours from Swansea University, shows that I am sufficiently knowledgeable in the subject matter to teach others. Especially due to my methodology listed above, of building a solid foundation of the basic principles before tackling the subject matter itself, I believe that teaching is a natural fit for me as I find it useful to breakdown the subject to myself in order to understand it, and so breaking it down for others to understand should follow suit. I am aware that everyone learns differently, and I accept that I will have to be more flexible regarding how I explain a subject as the way I process certain intuitive ideas will not be the same for all my students. Fortunately, this is something I have experienced before when talking with fellow students at University in both physics and other disciplines.
At the risk of sounding overconfident, during my time in University I was one of the top students in the class and during assessment workshops I would often find my fellow students of physics coming to me for help in understanding the questions we were given, and I often enjoyed discussing the topics with them and would delight in seeing them become animated once the solution finally "clicked". In the same way, my friends at the time were all taking different subjects yet, to my surprise, they would often comment in earnest that they would enjoy the way I would break down and explain some physics that had been previously confused them, whether they saw it in a documentary or whether it was relevant to the subject they were studying. This positive feedback I would receive regarding the way I explained physics was also a factor in making me realise that a future as a professor in physics was a career I would not only find intellectually stimulating but also worthwhile and rewarding.
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Undergraduate Degree: Swansea University, - Bachelor of Science, Physics
I have recently taken up amateur astronomy after receiving a relatively small Celestron telescope for use in the garden. It is fascinating to observe the planets in our own solar system in such detail – making out the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter – and I have recently obtained an extension allowing for photos to be taken of these objects, with the best results of this method being the Moon. I also enjoy reading for both learning and for a good story. Hence I read both non-fictional works, such as: The Feynman Lectures; The Selfish Gene; and Man and His Symbols, and fiction, of which my current favourites include: Crime and Punishment; The Works of H.P. Lovecraft; and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. As well as these more academic pursuits, I also enjoy general health and fitness. Since my early teens I have understood the need to maintain my health, both via nutrition and consistent exercise, for both physical and mental well-being. To keep the enjoyment in the process I like to cycle throughout the year into periods of putting on muscle-mass, by attending the gym, into periods of fat-loss and advancing general cardiovascular health by performing home training routines in the manner of the now popular Joe Wicks HIIT training.
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