Patrick

I went to St Bernard's Catholic Grammar School, achieving 6 A*s at A-level in 2012. I started teaching with swimming when I was 13, first starting volunteering with children with learning difficulties, then getting a qualification and paid weekend work. I then went to University of Cambridge, graduating in 2016 with a First in Materials Science BA, multiple prizes for excellence, then getting my MSci. I worked in JPMorgan 2016-2018, then moved to New York to work for sales for a tech startup April 2019-June 2020. I moved back to the UK in December 2020 to pursue a career as a therapist, and I started tutoring to support my part time studies for that. I now have my foundation certificate in therapy, but I decided to stick with full time tutoring, which I've done since February 2021.

I bring a lot of energy and personality into sessions. I'm an extrovert and try to make sessions as engaging as possible by keeping it socially engaging as well as intellectually stimulating. I get a sense of a student's personality and meet them where they are, whether that means me taking a more formal approach or a more relaxed one. While I prefer relaxed learning environments to keep students as personally settled as possible, I don't sacrifice academic standards. I am nurturing but demanding. I explain using metaphors to draw on their existing understanding, tying in any interests or hobbies where relevant. I also use the Socratic method, asking a lot of questions rather than telling them the answer, so that they absorb not just the answers but the process for arriving at them.

Full time tutoring for the forseeable future. I find it's a really good blend of IQ and EQ, getting to use my personality and emotional skills from therapy training to produce strong relationships, while using the IQ to really get students to understand the material. I'm a keen diarist, and the plan for the next few years is to write and publish a memoir, which the tutoring lifestyle really supports. I play the violin in an amateur classical orchestra and a musical theatre orchestra.