Love it or hate it, biology is an important class. It helps you get into four year colleges and opens endless academic and professional pathways.
Seattle Tutoring Services has several pre-med tutors who are well versed in biology, among other subjects. Whether it regular biology, honors or AP Biology, we can help. We promise our efforts in tutoring biology won’t be as dry as your high school class.
When I first took biology, I hated it. I’m not proud of it but my high school course felt like a bunch of memorization. Who cares what goes on inside a cell? And what the heck is the difference between meiosis and mitosis?
Teachers don’t always do the best job putting biological concepts and processes into context.
That’s where a good biology tutor comes into play.
Take for example natural selection. Who cares about Darwin and his finches? Okay, they have a lot of different beaks and ecological niches they fill.
But how does that affect my life? One of the types of natural selection you’ll discover is directional selection. For example, imagine an island in the galapagos with two variants of finches: “A” specializes in small seeds with a small beak and “B” specializes in big seeds with its big beak.
Now imagine they hit a terrible drought and the plants that produce small seeds are no longer viable. Almost all seeds are big, therefore selecting for larger beaked finches (type B). The average beak size increases. That’s called directional selection.
But how does that affect me?
When you go to hospital for a simple procedure or a surgery, you don’t want to get a serious infection. Unfortunately, there are deadly bacterial infections that people acquire there all too frequently.
Why are they so deadly?
Over the many decades of use of antibiotics, bacteria has evolved dramatically. The few types of bacteria that can survive antibiotics have now proliferated in hospitals, creating a massive public health problem.
Understanding the finches can now help us understand this situation. With further research, hopefully we can find new antibiotics and better strategies to avoid the directional selection that is imposed on bacteria when we use antibiotics. There are many academic and professional opportunities for research.
For more info about natural selection, check out this Berkeley site: https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/home.php
Let us know if one of our tutors can help you develop study skills that are appropriate for biology. Most people find that the subject can require novel approaches compared to other subjects.
Desmond is our expert Bio tutor. He has excelled in AP Bio through advanced coursework at UW, where he majors in biochemistry.
Desmond with Dubs II
Seattle Tutoring services helped me get into calculus, my first math class in 10 years. After all my own independent review using online courses like Khan Academy it was helpful that I get brought up to speed with the help of someone who could help me focus on what I needed to learn to be best prepared for calculus. In my calculus class I was just as well equipped as students who had taken math the previous quarter and finished as one of the top students in the class. Follow up support, scholarship recommendations and educational advice were unexpected and generous support that continued after. Not necessarily a part of the tutoring service but a benefit of working with an educator passionate about helping their students.
Arica SchuettDecember 20, 2016
Great experience! Quick response to a last-minute request for calculus help. Jeremy was great at quickly understanding where I was and clearly explained the concepts. I will definitely call them again.
Stephen ShettlerJune 2, 2018
Used them for three years. Always very helpful and receptive to our students needs. Very highly recommended!
Dan AllisonNovember 19, 2019
They combined the best of both worlds -- convenience and ease of using technology, and caring and thoughtful interpersonal skills -- to help my student get over a big hump and the anxiety that accompanied. We were in a time crunch and reached out, with a pretty specific subject need, and I knew that the wrong match between tutor and students could make things worse. I explained my student's situation in an email, and heard back promptly and with detail -- not just explaining how to get started, and different service delivery options, but giving me background on personality and experience from a few different tutors so that I could figure out the best "match" for our situation. I was really impressed. And then highly impressed with the ACTUAL tutoring and tutor. The mental block was eased, the snag was figured out and my student was back on track. It set a positive stage for starting high school, knowing that if there was a wrinkle, my student could get through it and knew the steps to self-advocate and work the problem. I've recommended them several times already, and will continue to do so. I think we'll be setting up regular check-in appts this year in a subject or two - so convenient that student can discuss with tutor while at home and in the evenings after sports.
Lisa GeisnessAugust 27, 2019
My daughter who was taking Physics as a senior in high school wrote this: Jeremy's deep understanding and excitement on the topic created a good learning environment. He was very welcoming to help me with the subject which in turn made me comfortable to ask as many questions as needed. Very good tutor and helped my grade in the class a ton!
Rima EllardJuly 10, 2018
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