How I Make a Living as a Tutor

I graduated with a Master's in Chemistry. I worked at an R&D sector in a company for about two years, but I got tired of the 9-5 grind and I found out that I have a Mitral Valve Prolapse which hindered me from working under a stressful environment. So I started looking at teaching jobs. Well, there was a high demand for Chemistry Professors in different community colleges. I was an Adjunct Professor (part-time) and I was working at two different colleges at the same time every semester AND summer, since the full-time professors didn't want to work during the summer. The pay was good but commuting between home and both colleges (which were about 40 minutes away from home) was difficult. I did that for about 6-7 years and eventually got to find a nice house to rent. But, I was tired physically and mentally and I just got tired in general of teaching the same subject content over and over again.

So I tried to look for other ways of making money. I came across a tutoring company based in Southern California and they were looking for online tutors (I live in Central California) who can tutor remotely throughout California. I liked their vision because they aim to offer tutoring to home-schooled kids. I loved the concept because these kids usually learn content on their own with just a book or any online assignments and they only see their "teacher" every two weeks or so for evaluations or tests. Mind you, they are middle school and high school kids who probably aren't equipped with any learning skills because they never had a teacher to teach them, so some of the content that they're learning are alien language to them. I teach mostly Math and Science and usually my first tutoring with the student is chaos, first thing they would say is,"I don't understand the topic." I would meet with them once a week and become their "teacher" technically since they see me more than anybody. It's definitely rewarding especially when I know that these kids learn so much from our weekly sessions and ace their tests at the end of the semester!

My other job is tutoring in an actual tutoring center. They open after 3pm since that's when the kids get off school. It's definitely a different experience because I would have at least 2 students at a time doing homework on different subjects vs my 1-on-1 online tutoring. It thought me how to multi-task and give ample attention to each student. Most of the students are involved in athletics so these are the kids who miss classes or homework because they have away games or practices and don't really have time to do homework on their own. Most of them do not retain information from class because they are probably distracted with their extracurricular activities. Tutoring them is rewarding as well especially when preparing them for SATs. We have a 12 weekend regimen when it comes to SAT prep and it feels so good when they get at least a 1200 and especially when they find out they got into the college of their choice!

My schedule works out for both jobs because since my online tutoring is geared towards home-schooled students, they have more flexibility when it comes to scheduling sessions. I usually do online tutoring weekday mornings and Fridays. The tutoring center, on the other hand, opens Monday-Thursday afternoons and Saturday mornings for athletes who don't have time during the week because of games. So I pretty much work six days a week, and for some reason it is less stressful than when I was teaching at the colleges. I think it's because I like the variety of subjects I tutor on from English, Math, Science, and the like. It never gets boring to me and I get to meet different students of all ages.

I am way happier nowadays and less stressed because I found a job that is both rewarding and that I can make a living of off :)

BTW here is the house that I am able to rent because of tutoring. Look at that land!