About A Tutoring Enterprises
"A Tutoring" is a business located in Lincoln, Nebraska (United States). I started the business in the summer of 1990, and have been catering predominately to the physics and mathematics students at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Occasionally I see students from some of the other smaller local colleges around the city. I have also seen a significant increase in business from Lincoln Public Schools during the last few years.
I received a Bachelor of Science (majoring in Physics and minoring in Mathematics) and a Bachelor of Arts (majoring in Anthropology with special emphasis on Archaeology and minoring in Geophysics) from Western Illinois University in 1984, and a Masters of Science in Physics (specializing in Physical Archeometry) from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln in 1989.
Along the way, I've tutored students in both calculus and non-calculus based introductory Physics courses; sophomore level mechanics courses for physics majors; sophomore levels of statics and dynamics courses for Construction Engineers (non-calculus based), engineering majors and physics majors (calculus based); Calculus courses, Differential Equations courses, Algebra courses, Trigonometry courses, Geometry courses, Linear Algebra (matrix theory) courses, Statistics courses, and Calculus for business majors; as well as Fluids and Thermodynamics courses for engineering majors. I have helped dental students studying for their DAT's for admission into the local Dental College, and I have helped a number of engineering students study for their EIT's. During this time I have had ocassion to stand in as recitation instructor for physics classes at UNL and for the ROTC tutoring program; teaching instructor for the physics labs at UNL; and lecture instructor at Concordia College in Seward, Nebraska. And since December of 1994, I have been employed by the Lincoln Public Schools as a mentor in their Highly Gifted Mentoring program which covers students from first grade through high school seniors.
I have also written and sold twelve solution manuals on texts for calculus and non-calculus based introductory Physics courses; statics and dynamics courses for Construction Engineering; Statistics courses; and Algebra courses. These have been sold locally with varying success.
My name is Joe Maciarz. I took my first physics course back in my home town in the fall of my senior year at Oak Forest (suburb of Chicago) High School, Illinois in 1978. I didn't really know what physics was before I took that course, and I must admit that I don't think I was much the wiser afterwards.
Our instructor showed little confidence in his own knowledge of physics, admitting that he generally received C's throughout his scholastic career in the subject. But he clearly showed a certain enjoyment and fascination for the subject when he seemed to forget that he was really teaching a bunch of uninterested spoiled youngsters and lost himself in his explanations. On the other hand, his worst moments were in trying to demonstrate scientific principles with apparatus that simply would obey no law other than Murphy's.
It was these simple failed demonstrations which seemed to stay with me as the only thing I retained from this class. And it would only be in college that the meaning of these demonstrations would become evident to me. But that first physics teacher gave me more than just some failed experiments to remember. He also led me to my major.
In the spring of my senior year of high school, I really didn't know what to major in, or what college to go to. I felt like I had the ability to do well in any major since I had done very well in all of my high school classes. All except one. While I and four other students received A's that year in physics, we all knew that only one deserved it for actually understanding the material. And it wasn't me. (I believe the student that did went to the University of Illinios for an engineering degree but I'm not aware of what became of him.) Never-the-less, when it came time to declare a major, I felt little interest in any particular subject what-so-ever, and the only thing that came to mind was a phrase my physics teacher mentioned in passing. He said, "If you graduate with a physics degree, you may not actually know anything, but people will still treat you like a god." And from my experience I would add, "If they don't treat you like a god, they usually won't mess with you."
For various reasons, least of which had to do with a quality education, I decided to go to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles as a declared physics major. You might have noted the warmer climate of southern California in comparison to my home town region of Chicago. This can only be taken as a sheer coincidence. And indeed in all seriousness, my social education was absolutely outstanding. The multicultural environment mixed in with my experiences of having to deal with life on my own and very far away from any parental guidance was a fantastic learning adventure. And the parties were pretty good too.
But educationally, through no fault of USC, I felt much less satisfied and much more unsure of my scholastic direction. I decided to head closer to home and reduce cost by attending Western Illinois University. After four more years, I walked away with a double major and double minor (triple minor if you included my work on computer programming). With my odd mixture of degrees from Western and through a convoluted set of circumstances, I was offered a position in the graduate program at the University of Lincoln - Nebraska. After a truly embarrassing and disastrous first semester, I began to make the transition from student to... well educator might be pushing it, but self-educator would be more accurate.
After graduating from UNL with a masters degree, I discovered the job market was rather bleak. I took some odd jobs and put up some signs on some of the school's bulletin boards to earn some extra money tutoring. I didn't receive any calls for two years and had forgotten about the signs when suddenly I received five calls in one week. (I surmise that my signs had been covered by other advertising, which had probably been exposed and left after the bulletin boards were cleaned off.)
This was the start of my business, although I have supplemented it with more traditional job-oriented positions since that time. Typically, I have twenty to forty students each semester. I have wanted to start tutoring online in some form since 2000, but never found the time to start to make the transition. After tutoring my niece in the fall of 2011 and the spring of 2012, I felt the time was right to finally expand my business in this direction. After that there was a period of both online and in-person tutoring. When Covid hit, the business turned exclusively to online as you might expect. At this point, I'm hoping to continue working through Skype.