My newest Craigslist ad, specifically for GRE-takers.
I admit I'm ambivalent about using Craigslist. While I've found some good people through the site-- I once sold a set of old D&D books to a Dungeons and Dragons fan, for example-- I've also encountered some freaks, like the person who asked me to help him cheat on a math exam. Craigslist is definitely a mixed bag; use it at your own risk. All the same, I'm hopeful that, through these ads, I'll meet high-caliber students who are motivated to do well on the GRE.
(By the way, for those who don't know: ETS is still compiling data on test-taker performance, so scores aren't being released-- for anybody-- until November.)
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Friday, September 30, 2011
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
the first-ever Religious Studies course:
January 2012
Check back with me every now and again to learn more about the first religious studies course I'll be teaching this coming January. Most likely, it'll be a three-hour course taught on Sundays; it'll last about 15 or 16 weeks, and will be taught as an actual academic course, so expect the works: reading assignments, mandatory discussion, tests, research papers, etc. I'm probably going to teach Philosophy of Religion, since that's a pretty basic course for people who are dipping their toes into the pool of religious studies. To learn more about what such a course would entail, click the Religion tab above (or the link I just provided! it's the same thing).
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HOW TO REGISTER FOR COURSES
There's a lot of information stored at those tabbed pages (see the links underneath the banner? Home, About, test Prep, Math, English, etc.?), but registering for a course of study isn't hard. The procedure is listed at the bottom of the Rates and Registration page, but I'm reprinting it here on the main blog for all to see:
HOW TO REGISTER:
1. Select your course of study: Test Prep, Math, English, Foreign Language, Religion. (Click the appropriate tabs above to read about what subjects I tutor.)
2. Determine your BASIC RATE by using the above information or by consulting the RATE CHARTS (the same as the information above, but in easy-to-read chart form). Factor in any rate adjustments related to the number of students and to whether the course will require a gas/travel fee.
3. Finalize the total cost. You will be paying a single lump sum. No installments.
4. Contact me (Kevin) via email and inform me that you wish to enroll (yourself or your child/children, or a group of students) in a course of study. Confirm that costs have been calculated properly, and settle on a mutually agreeable schedule for private lessons, to begin ONE WEEK after payment has been received (no earlier). My email contact info:
kevin.timeffortfocus [at] gmail [dot] com
5. Send your payment by whatever method you and Kevin settle on. Credit card is possible (card info can be given verbally or via fax), as are cash and personal checks.
6. Start lessons a week later!
UPDATE: I've created a registration form on Google Docs. The link to the form is here. Instead of printing the form out as paper, download it as an MS Word document, fill it out on your computer, save it, and send it to me as a file attachment. Use the above email address both for emailing and for PayPal payment. (The form doesn't ask you to list any of your financial information. Until I get enough business to justify my own website and payment-encryption method, it's best for prospective students to use PayPal, which is what I use for eBay and other transactions.)
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HOW TO REGISTER:
1. Select your course of study: Test Prep, Math, English, Foreign Language, Religion. (Click the appropriate tabs above to read about what subjects I tutor.)
2. Determine your BASIC RATE by using the above information or by consulting the RATE CHARTS (the same as the information above, but in easy-to-read chart form). Factor in any rate adjustments related to the number of students and to whether the course will require a gas/travel fee.
3. Finalize the total cost. You will be paying a single lump sum. No installments.
4. Contact me (Kevin) via email and inform me that you wish to enroll (yourself or your child/children, or a group of students) in a course of study. Confirm that costs have been calculated properly, and settle on a mutually agreeable schedule for private lessons, to begin ONE WEEK after payment has been received (no earlier). My email contact info:
kevin.timeffortfocus [at] gmail [dot] com
5. Send your payment by whatever method you and Kevin settle on. Credit card is possible (card info can be given verbally or via fax), as are cash and personal checks.
6. Start lessons a week later!
UPDATE: I've created a registration form on Google Docs. The link to the form is here. Instead of printing the form out as paper, download it as an MS Word document, fill it out on your computer, save it, and send it to me as a file attachment. Use the above email address both for emailing and for PayPal payment. (The form doesn't ask you to list any of your financial information. Until I get enough business to justify my own website and payment-encryption method, it's best for prospective students to use PayPal, which is what I use for eBay and other transactions.)
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Sunday, July 24, 2011
Three Ingredients for Success
The phrase "time and effort"-- as in "Thank you for your time and effort!"-- is a fairly common one. Most of us have used it at one point or another, but I've often felt that the expression lacked something, and after a bit of thought I realized: worthy accomplishments involve more than just time and effort: they also involve focus.
Think about it: if you're learning to play a musical instrument, you need to put in the time; there's no way around this. You also can't simply sit in your practice chair for hours, doing nothing, and assume that time spent equals effort made. No: you actually need to practice. So effort counts, too. But if your effort lacks direction, if you don't have any specific goals and guidelines by which to operate, then it doesn't matter how much time and effort you put into the task-- you'll never succeed at it. Focus is the missing ingredient, here: focus refers to one's ability to strip away all the extraneous thoughts and actions and simply concentrate on doing what needs to be done. Focus is what links a person to his or her goal: it's clarity of purpose. Time and effort are linked to willpower, but willpower is never enough. You have to know what you're doing and where you're going. You have to possess direction and vision.
Time, effort, and focus. I'm not saying that these three ingredients are the only ingredients to success; there may well be others, e.g., talent, for instance. But these three ingredients seem so basic to me that it would be silly not to mention them.
So that's why the blog has the title it does. The blog's URL, "seongdo," comes from the Korean pronunciation of the characters for "attain/succeed" (Chinese 成, Korean 성, seong-- sounds a bit like the English "sung") and "Tao/the Way" (Chinese 道, Korean 도, do-- sounds a bit like the English "doe"). In China, the term originally referred to the Taoist notion of attaining and becoming one with the true Way; when Buddhism entered China, however, the term also took on the Buddhist meaning of enlightenment.
This blog is all about teaching people, but I don't want you to think I claim any enlightenment for myself. I tend to look at enlightenment the way most people view self-improvement: it's an ongoing process. Not only that, but it's cooperative: in any teacher-student relationship, the teacher is often learning as much as the student is.
In subsequent blog posts, I'll be talking more specifically about what I'm doing-- what subjects I'm hoping to teach, who my market is, and why I'm teaching. Stay tuned!
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Think about it: if you're learning to play a musical instrument, you need to put in the time; there's no way around this. You also can't simply sit in your practice chair for hours, doing nothing, and assume that time spent equals effort made. No: you actually need to practice. So effort counts, too. But if your effort lacks direction, if you don't have any specific goals and guidelines by which to operate, then it doesn't matter how much time and effort you put into the task-- you'll never succeed at it. Focus is the missing ingredient, here: focus refers to one's ability to strip away all the extraneous thoughts and actions and simply concentrate on doing what needs to be done. Focus is what links a person to his or her goal: it's clarity of purpose. Time and effort are linked to willpower, but willpower is never enough. You have to know what you're doing and where you're going. You have to possess direction and vision.
Time, effort, and focus. I'm not saying that these three ingredients are the only ingredients to success; there may well be others, e.g., talent, for instance. But these three ingredients seem so basic to me that it would be silly not to mention them.
So that's why the blog has the title it does. The blog's URL, "seongdo," comes from the Korean pronunciation of the characters for "attain/succeed" (Chinese 成, Korean 성, seong-- sounds a bit like the English "sung") and "Tao/the Way" (Chinese 道, Korean 도, do-- sounds a bit like the English "doe"). In China, the term originally referred to the Taoist notion of attaining and becoming one with the true Way; when Buddhism entered China, however, the term also took on the Buddhist meaning of enlightenment.
This blog is all about teaching people, but I don't want you to think I claim any enlightenment for myself. I tend to look at enlightenment the way most people view self-improvement: it's an ongoing process. Not only that, but it's cooperative: in any teacher-student relationship, the teacher is often learning as much as the student is.
In subsequent blog posts, I'll be talking more specifically about what I'm doing-- what subjects I'm hoping to teach, who my market is, and why I'm teaching. Stay tuned!
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