Part of what I love most about being a journalist is breaking things down and making them understandable to the massesbasically, teaching people new things. If they don't comprehend and retain that knowledge, I haven't succeeded in my job, just like a tutor. I've been informally tutoring people for years, whether it's helping children study for classes while babysitting in high school and college or helping classmates learn and prepare for school all the way back to my elementary school days. In one form or another, I've been helping people learn almost as long as I remember. A great tutor needs to be intelligent, with a comprehensive, intuitive understanding of the subject matter. It's not enough to just know the answers to questions; a tutor needs to understand why the answers are what they are. A great tutor needs to be compassionate, patient, understanding, and kind, to help create a safe, creative and comfortable environment for the student to learn. And a great tutor needs to be empathetic, to be able to put him/herself in the student's shoes and understand why he or she might be having trouble.

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