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Stanford-Tutoring the Tudors-Intellectual Vitality


NeoGeo 5 / 11  
Dec 24, 2009   #1
Stanford-Tutoring the Tudors-Intellectual Vitality

Hello forum members:

"Stanford students are widely known to possess a sense of intellectual vitality. Tell us about an idea or an experience you have had that you find intellectually engaging."

When the phrase "intellectually engaging" enters my brain, my mind doesn't jump towards a challenging calculus test, my favorite book, or Wikipedia.com. Instead, it looks at tutoring. Tutoring means much more to me than giving up three hours out of my week and making a nice forty dollars. It offers an experience and skill few high school students have: the ability to teach others.

I was nervous when I received my first tutoring gig as a junior for pre-calculus. Granted, I was talented at math, but had virtually no knowledge pertaining to vectors, matrices, and the dreadful polar coordinates. As my pupil and I sat down, he stated he needed help understanding Descartes' Law of Signs, a rule I had never heard of before. Wanting to appear as professional as possible, I rapidly flipped the pages of his textbook and swiftly analyzed and absorbed this mystic Descartes' Law of Signs.

This in and of itself was an intellectual feat: learning an entirely new concept under the pressure of a client looking over my shoulder and expecting help. But this was the easy part. The real challenge was then synthesizing the information in such a way that my pupil would understand and fully grasp the concept. Doing so was not only dependent on my clarity, creativeness, and ability in explaining things, but also on my student's attentiveness and willingness to understand the ideas. I ended up being successful in helping my student understand Descartes' Law, and he later improved his grade to an "A" in pre-calculus.

While my experience in tutoring has bred skills like thinking on my toes and creativeness in communicating and explaining ideas, I do not feel that those qualities are the most important products. Rather, tutoring helped me learn patience. I can control how I process and learn information or how I describe a theorem to my student. However, I was never able to affect my student's attitude, or desire to learn. This is what taught me patience, that, no matter how frustrated or disinterested my student became in learning something new, I would remain calm and steadfast in my efforts.
sportybluei 7 / 40  
Dec 24, 2009   #2
When the phrase "intellectually engaging" enters my brain, my mind doesn't jump towards a challenging calculus test, my favorite book, or Wikipedia.com.

I don't know if I really like the first sentence.. Since your essay focuses on your love of tutoring, how about beginning with a touching sentence that really shows how you feel about it?

and skill few high school students have

sounds like you are emphasizing yourself too much.. it would be better if you phrase it differently.

tutoring gig

too casual. Just tutoring could be fine..

Granted, I was talented at math,

Again, you are emphasizing too much about yourself. Try to put that in the essay subtly.

intellectual feat

same thing here too. put that in subtly...

While my experience in tutoring has bred skills like thinking on my toes and creativeness in communicating and explaining ideas, I do not feel that those qualities are the most important products. Rather, tutoring helped me learn patience.

You focused your third paragraph about you trying to communicate what you know to the student, and I liked that approach, more than you focusing on patience in the next paragraph (which sounded a little cliche).

I think this essay could be really nice with some improvement! :) Keep it up!

Can you do me a favor of looking at my essay? Thanks.
sportybluei 7 / 40  
Dec 24, 2009   #3
By offering my time for the benefit of other students

It sounds like you're being generous. You could phrase it differently?

I have participated in a unique experience not provided in a standard high school education: the ability to teach others.

I have learned something not provided with would be better...

whether that sharing of information is a product of tutoring or excitement.

I had to read this several times. So tutoring=excitement, right? Try to make that clearer..

I like the idea of removing the fourth paragraph. It ties together the essay more. Good job! :)
whitepolarbear 7 / 31  
Dec 24, 2009   #4
Well, the topic can be interesting, but the way you relate it is kind of generic. What I am saying is, of course people who tutor need to grasp a better understanding of the material. It can be clear, but I found myself zoning out a bit. Try making it a bit more interesting?

I would appreciate it if you took a look at mine:


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