Fun Facts

I am a lifelong enthusiast of music, mathematics, puzzles and games. In high school, I fell in love with a board game called Pente (similar to Connect 4, except the goal is to place five consecutive stones and you can capture your opponent's stones). After three years of intense study, I become one of the top Pente players in the world. More recently, I have taken up chess and I wish to attain the same level of proficiency.

Music is even more important to me. I have played piano since I was five years old and cello since I was a freshman in high school. I love playing and listening to the great masterpieces of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms.

Math and puzzles have also been major interests throughout my life. I am an avid solver of the New York Times crossword. I competed in the Putnam competition (an insanely difficult college mathematics competition) my junior and senior years of college.

My other intellectual passion is the Spanish language. I have read books and poetry in Spanish, and I lived in Buenos Aires for the first half of 2009 as an exchange student, taking classes taught in Spanish at the University of Buenos Aires.

About Me

I am currently preparing to get my Masters or Ph.D in mathematics. I plan on using my degree to either become an electrical engineer, computer programmer/software engineer, or college mathematics professor. A dream of mine is to play chess competitively and/or teach chess to children.

I have been a portland">tutor for seven years. My first portland">tutoring experience was as an America Reads/America Counts portland">tutor intern as a work study job in college. I taught math and reading to 1st, 4th and 5th grade students. After graduating college, I tutored many subjects (mostly math) as an Upward Bound portland">tutor at David Douglas High School. Most recently, I tutored high school Algebra and Geometry full-time as a Denver washington/summit">Summit Math Fellow.

I would describe my portland">tutoring style as energetic, client-centered and intense but lighthearted. I am very passionate about mathematics and I love to use my expertise and intelligence to convey mathematical concepts in a variety of ways, many of which the student may have never been exposed to. I try to make sure that the portland">tutoring session remains centered on the most important thing, the student's learning and progress, by performing frequent checks for understanding and ensuring that the client is doing at least 50% of the talking and work.