copying this from email i used to spam Ruddock, and hopefully reaching an audience of Caltech students by the blog being fed into Facebook
Dear Rudds,
I live in purgatory. By this I mean I have escaped the hell of Caltech,
but not so totally that I am free (or graduated) as yet. In my current
limbo state between enrolled student a person with degree, I've been
supporting myself financially by tutoring. I tutor both through the
Caltech tutoring list and a tutoring agency called Supreme Educational
Services. This email is an advertisement for SES.
http://www.supremetutors.com/laoc/about.php
The company is run by a friendly Caltech grad (and ex-Rudd) name Albert
who started it while he was a grad student at Stanford. They mostly
work in the bay area but are expanding into LA and especially the
Caltech area. He's looking for Caltech students to tutor mostly high
school level kids in academic subjects.
Here is a run-down:
Qualifications:
* have some tutoring experience (I had just a few months. Being a
TA would probably work, too)
* be good at whatever you want to tutor, but don't necessarily need
a great GPA, or need to major in that subject
* have to know calculus (also a requirement not to flame)
* helpful to have a car, but not absolutely necessary (I don't)
* probably helpful to be an upperclassman
* US citizen
Good Things About Working There
* at least $30/hr, i make $40, also you can get travel compensation
* don't have to deal with the business end of things - just record
the # hours and dates you work and send in to the company at the
end of the month. you get one check. if you ever have any
business disagreements with someone, my boss deals with it and you
don't have to
* less competition to get clients than on the caltech list
(sometimes when I talk to someone i met through the CDC list they
tell me they have 15 other people making them offers)
* can work very few hours/week (like 2-3) if you are busy or more if
you are not so busy
* can preview your students and learn a fair bit about them before
deciding if you wan to work with them
* allowed to tutor other students privately on the side, as long as
you didn't meet them through the agency
* i got to tutor a guy who is taking basic physics at UCLA and also
owns an exotic car rental agency, and he drove me around in a
ferrari for a bit, and then i explained the philosophical
implications of the symmetry of newton's laws with respect to time
reversal, and then we played video games (don't tell my boss about
this)
Bad Things
* you have the knowledge that the person you are tutoring for is
paying significantly more money than you are actually receiving.
therefore, you are working for below your own market rate, but
then you realize that you are only worth so much BECAUSE you're
associated with the company. people would rather pay $70/hr to a
company to have you tutor their child than $50/hr to you directly,
and that's depressing, because you realize that an ideological
picture of the world in which people are rewarded solely in
accordance to the merit of their work is impossible to realize in
this harsh world
* i can't guarantee albert will hire you, or that he won't fire you
for being sucky, or that if he hires you he'll immediately have
work available for you, but the more people who interview with him
the more he'll work on finding clients down here
* you are a legitimate business professional and will get in serious
trouble if you tell your student lots of fart jokes and their
parents overhear and don't like it. if their parents do like it
you are golden, so you should always ask parents whether they like
fart jokes shortly after introducing yourself
* you may end up teaching someone who, with considerable help, can
get by well enough to solve the problems on their homework, but
will never, ever, ever fully understand the concept of a function,
a limit, a proof by induction, a physical law, or any other sort
of abstract idea (possibly including multiplication), and
consequently will miss out on "the pleasure of finding things out"
for the duration of their existence. teaching someone who simply
has no aptitude is depressing because for such a person, learning
about physics is like going to the symphony on the night they play
beethoven, watching the conductor's passionate gesticulations,
reading along with the score on your lap, but sitting and watching
from a soundproof booth
Anyway, the reason I'm advertising to you is that my boss needs more
tutors in the area to make his expansion viable. In other words, if no
one else starts working for him, it's not worth his time to try to
organize things in this area just for me.
I think it's a good opportunity because it earns more money than SSEL or
work study and about the same as the being a self-employed private
tutor, and is less effort than being self-employed. It's something you
can do in your spare time and drop at the end of the year if you feel
like it. Also, I will get $50 if you say I referred you, and I will
totally use part of it to do something nice for you, especially if you
are physically attractive or an interesting conversationalist (logical
OR, not XOR).
If you want to interview with SES, just email Albert (although you might
want to call him Mr. Lee at first) at atlee@supremetutors.com, and
mention my name. He will probably set something up with you before the
break and get you some work early in the new year.
If you have any further questions, email me and I will do my best to
answer them, possibly in a direct, succinct, and helpful manner, and
possibly in a snide and degrading one, depending upon both my mood and
my evaluation of your physical attractiveness.
Mark
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