My passion for language has taken me far.
I began tutoring in 1978, when I was an editor with the Arabic edition of The Reader's Digest in Paris. An ambitious young secretary asked me to help her become truly bilingual. We succeeded, and she became my closest friend in Paris. In the years since, I've secured most of my tutoring assignments myself, through referrals and advertising, but I've occasionally worked under contract with agencies.
As a journalist, I’ve won considerable acclaim. At the age of 26, before I moved to Europe, I was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. On my return to the States, I wrote for NBC-Radio and the Los Angeles Times and headed the public relations department of the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta. In recent years I've written columns for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and articles for Religion News Service, an international wire service based in D.C.
Some of my work is available on the Internet, and a 2002 newspaper column has been reprinted in The Civil Mind, a textbook used in first-year writing courses in American colleges. Another column, addressing the religious dimensions of President George W. Bush's war on terrorism, is cited in three books on American involvement in the Middle East: Wrestling with Zion; Persecution, Privilege and Power; and The Folly of War.
I’ve taught media ethics to college juniors and seniors and, through America Online, theology and philosophy of religion to adult students. I've also taught for Kaplan and Princeton Review. My qualifications? During the Seventies, long before the advent of the test-prep industry, I twice made a virtually perfect score on the verbal section of the GRE.
I come by my language skills honestly. I'm Irish and Southern, the product of two cultures that value eloquence, and I come from a family of journalists, lawyers and teachers. I also had the good fortune to attend a progressive girls' secondary school operated by the Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart. Later I worked my way through both college and graduate school, earning a bachelor's degree in journalism and English from Georgia State University and a master's in the academic study of religion from Claremont School of Theology in southern California.
Multi-Culturalist and Feminist
I am a committed multi-culturalist. I appreciate the many ways of life on our Earth, and I believe we all have something to learn from one another. For example, I've learned that, in some countries, tutors are primarily teenagers who work for pocket money.
I'm also a lifelong feminist. I aspire to realize my full potential, and I support women everywhere in their efforts to do the same. Do you come from a culture that regards tutoring as a casual job that virtually anyone can do?
Do you believe that women should be limited to certain roles? Please be aware that I do not share your values, and I may not be the right tutor for you.