Lucy Smith

Profile of Lucy Smith

Lucy Smith

£50/hr

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About me

A passionate and friendly tutor with extensive knowledge in mathematics and physics, and over four years of experience delivering engaging tutorials, meeting people where they’re at and cheering them on to new success.

Can you imagine a world made up of tiny little strings, all vibrating and singing a cosmic symphony that composes a beautiful reality? That beyond the subatomic scale are hidden and curled-up dimensions in addition to our familiar four of space and time? That an entire universe is clinging to the surface of a higher-dimensional membrane floating in hyperspace, waiting to collide with another and set off a second big bang?

Can you imagine that being our universe?

I had to know more. And where better to learn than at the best university in the world? I set my goals high: if I reach for the moon but miss, then I would still land among the stars.

My problem was my grades.

My first year of A-levels wasn’t terrible, but I didn’t do well enough to meet a leading-university’s requirements. So I drew up a plan, took an extra year and an extra A-level, and factored in study time for resits. I believed wholeheartedly that if I worked hard enough and asked lots of questions, I could overcome the obstacles that academia laid before me. After three years of A-levels, thanks to a family and school that believed in me, I was accepted into Oxford University to read physics.

That was where the hard work began. But they were also the best years of my life.

A chance e-mail connected me with a professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and a few months later I packed my bags and travelled to the Far East, pursuing my dream of researching string theory as a PhD student. It was there that I discovered a passion for teaching mathematics and physics.

I jumped at the chance to be a teaching assistant for the international students’ calculus course. Thanks to my passion for the subject and for helping people succeed, my classes saw double the attendence than other teaching assistants: forty students in total. One year I was asked by the students to offer additional lectures in the run-up to exams, and they attracted fifty people. One lecture I delivered on Christmas Day, wearing a red santa hat!

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and supporting many students through the tutoring agency 3A Tutors, offering engaging and impactful tutorials and lessons online from my home in Bristol and campus in China. My PhD research was exciting, but it wasn’t going to benefit many people; I loved working with maths and physics students because I could see immediately the positive impact that I was having on people, encouraging them and inspiring them to succeed during what can be an incredibly difficult time in their lives. For me, helping someone succeed in a subject I love is hands-down the best job in the world.

Outside of tutoring, I play 8-ball on the Ultimate Pool Women’s Professional Series, seeded fifth out of thirty-two players for the 2024 season. I am a proud geek, currently writing an unofficial novel in the Doctor Who universe, audio scripts and performing in fan-made stories with What Fourth Wall Productions.

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