Fun Facts

Ever since I was a child, I have loved learning about and understanding the world. My greatest passions have been math and science, but I also have always found history, mythology (especially Greek and Roman), and religion studies interesting. I enjoy most sports but I love running, mostly long distance. Also, I can grow a pretty awesome afro.

About Me

I am an undergraduate astrophysics major at UCLA. I did research in the UCLA Dark Matter Research Laboratory last summer working on the hardware and equipment for experiments. I am now working with a professor making a model to estimate the size of an asteroid based on its thermal emission detected at Earth. I plan to go to graduate school to earn a doctorate in either astrophysics or physics. I would like to eventually become a teaching professor at a university.

My senior year of high school I was the teacher's assistant for the AP Calculus AB and BC classes. I spent a great deal of time helping students understand the concepts and work through problems during class after the teacher's lectures when time was given to study and work. I even spent many lunch hours helping some of the students who were struggling more and who sought more instruction. Since high school I haven't had any formal jobs or positions in which I have tutored, but I have often tutored friends, acquaintances, and classmates in physics, astronomy, and math.

I take great efforts to know a student and his or her level of understanding. Without knowing well how much a person understands, I can't know well what he or she doesn't understand and I won't know what to teach or how. I try to always connect new or difficult concepts to those concepts that he or she already understands well. I don't think it is helpful to simply answer students' questions or to show them a rigid method for solving problems, but rather to guide them to realize answers themselves and help learn why a method works, to critically analyze problems and learn how to reach a solution.