Award-Winning Private Science Tutoring in Marysville, WA

"In our first session together we were able to go over certain topics concerning the nature of stereoisomers and the chirality of organic molecules. The student admitted that there were certain areas she was having difficulty with, such as visualizing organic chiral molecules in three dimensions and assigning priority to functional groups, so I went over those ideas with her and gave her some tips on how to think about them in problems. We also went over relevant ideas such as optical rotation and Fischer projections. In general, the student seemed to enjoy learning more about organic chemistry, being highly cooperative and enthusiastic about understanding more; she certainly felt dedicated throughout and willing to improve herself."

"We worked mainly on naming ionic and covalent compounds. Her teacher is not doing a very good job and doesn't draw in the formal charges on the resonance structures, which gives the student little information on which to base the selection of which resonance structure is best. He is also leaving out many of the common names they will be expected to know, such as ferric, ferrous, stannic, and stannous. She will need a lot more work on memorizing her complex ions and their charges, as well as converting them to the correct acid name."

"We worked on calculating total displacement vectors from a series of individual displacements. The biggest struggle for the student was figuring out where to use trig to calculate the components of the individual displacements. Attitude is great; he reports that he's taken care of all the things we talked about last time, and he has fully reviewed his first test and understands all his mistakes (I did not cover this material, he says he did it with his teacher). Strategies included neat labeling of pictures and being sure to draw everything. His extra practice was to finish up two problems from the set we were working on. "

"We worked on dimensional analysis in preparation for his upcoming test. I usually like to get to know students in the first session, but we needed to focus on the exam. I recognize that his challenge is comparable to that of many students in math and science: not properly going through and listing all the steps in completing a problem. Also, he needs to start from the question prompt first in order to be able to eliminate any unnecessary information that the problem provides. He learns quickly!"