Ray Jacobs Email & Phone Number

"You learn something every day if you're not careful!" - A mantra I've heard my whole life.I've always been bookish and curious, but I didn't always have a passion for learning. As a neurodivergent youngster, my school days were hard for me. The inflexible environment and lofty expectations that I was expected to study in made me feel constrained. It was only further complicated by my difficulty finding social common ground with my peers. I was too verbose and too out-of-the-box for most of the other people my age. There were bright spots in classes I really liked and finding solace in choir, band, and theatre, but everything in between felt like an undertaking.Lucky for me, I really started to thrive when I began college. I realized that all the reservation I had felt was a result of being forced into a system that didn't work for me. As soon as I was able to pick my own classes, set my own schedule, and work at my own pace, my ravenous thirst for information bloomed into what it is today.Working in tutoring, especially tutoring in higher education, has been a total game-changer for me. Most people are in college because they want to learn, and most people seek tutoring because there's something they want to know. It gives me an automatic rapport with anyone who walks in the door. Being able to work with students from all different disciplines and walks of life gives me a whole new avenue for learning new things with every essay that I read; Being able to teach people the skills to help them find their voice in a prompt is a very powerful meaning to get from your 9-to-5. Above all this, I learned that the important thing in my work (as has become important in life) is not knowing all the information, but knowing how to find it. Both my students and I learn something every time we sit down together, be it a new research method or how to individualize the writing process to be more comfortable and allow more creativity. It's something I'm truly passionate about, and once you know where to look, you're easily able to find anything you're looking for.I think the desire to learn - about ourselves, about others, about the world - is what makes us human. It helps us connect to each other. And like that mantra I tell myself every day, I feel truly lucky to be in a profession that makes learning new things that much more fun.

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  Daytona State College

  English Language And Literature, General