Tutoring

I work with students of all ages and skill levels, with my primary focus being on composition–in other words, the basics of planning, structuring, and producing a piece of writing. I can help with college admission and scholarship essays, preparation for the English sections of the SAT and ACT, resumes, speeches, memoirs, and any other forms of writing. I also have extensive experience working with English language learners and can help you master the basics of English grammar and sentence structure.

If you live in the Kansas City metro area, I can work with you or your child in your home or any public location; if you live outside the KC metro, I conduct tutoring sessions over Zoom. I charge $30 per student per session for in-person tutoring and $25 for tutoring online (most tutoring sessions last for thirty minutes to one hour). If interested, please inquire via the contact form to schedule a “get to know you” meeting over Zoom.

Freelance writing

I offer a variety of freelance services, building on my years of experience as a writer and tutor to help you produce the best writing possible. I am especially strong in the areas of information organization and narrative, but am capable of helping with all aspects of a writing project and any kind of writing, including personal statements, college admission essays, and short stories. My freelance writing services include:

• Beta reading with detailed feedback and suggestions for improvement
• Proofreading and editing
• Copywriting (ads, sales letters, general website copy)
• Article writing (blog posts, essays, book chapters)

…and more. Because each project is unique, prices vary, but in general, I charge $0.15 per word. Please inquire via the contact form for more information and a detailed quote.

why hire me?

Let’s face it: given how generative AI has been preponderating, many people might question why they need a tutor or a freelance writer. Can’t you just use ChatGPT or some other generative AI system to produce whatever text you need, with perfect grammar to boot?

While technically true, this practice represents a real impoverishment, not just in the area of individual skill and creativity, but also in discourse as a whole. If you use generative AI to produce or correct all your writing, you will never learn to write well and will not gain the valuable skills of critical thinking and mental organization that come along with writing well. If everyone is doing this, then real human voices will become absent from the public square, and we will all be talking past each other even more than we already are.

Therefore, I provide tutoring to help students build the foundational writing skills that will help them in all areas of life. Skills of composition and rhetoric, along with the basics of writing mechanics, shape a person’s ability to think clearly about life. They are essential for many careers; furthermore, few (if any) colleges and scholarships allow students to submit AI-generated texts for applications, so writing skills are critical for educational success as well.

On the other hand, a human freelance writer can provide services no generative AI system can match. These systems lack the capability for holistic understanding that enable humans to easily grasp where a text can be improved on a deeper-than-mechanical level; they also cannot see into the intent of a client in a way that allows them to create an article or piece of copy that really captures the goals that client had in mind but couldn’t quite express.