1,402 ratings
Algebra nerd
Jessica R.
I make calculus rules feel earned, not memorized.
Education
Cornell University
B.A. in Mathematics, minor in Music
Hometown
Edison, New Jersey
A note from Jessica
“Calculus isn't fifty formulas — it's one idea, the limit, wearing fifty costumes, and my whole job is to catch it changing clothes so a derivative and an integral stop looking like strangers. Like a chess opening, once you see why each move is forced, you stop guessing and start playing.”
Jessica’s story
Jessica scored a 61 on her first BC Calculus test at J.P. Stevens High in Edison. Her mother, an actuary, put away the textbook and pulled out a chessboard, making Jessica defend why each move was forced by the one before it. That habit — nothing is allowed unless the previous step demands it — took her to a 5 on the AP exam and into Cornell's math program, where she TA'd Math 1110 for three years and became known for the Malott Hall office hours that ran past midnight because nobody wanted to leave with a gap. She still plays first-desk violin in a Boston community orchestra and holds an 1840 USCF chess rating, and she'll tell you both are really the same skill: sitting calmly with a position you don't understand yet until it cracks open.
What students say
4.9 ★ · 1,402 ratings
“I went into AP Calc AB with a 56% in the class and came out of the May exam with a 5. Jessica didn't reteach the whole course — she found the exact place the chain rule had quietly broken back in October and rebuilt from there. I stopped memorizing steps I didn't believe.”
“Aanya pulled her college Calc II grade from a C- to an A- in one semester. The moment I trusted it was the night she called me into her room to teach ME integration by parts, using Jessica's line about picking the part that 'dies when you differentiate it.' She was teaching it, not reciting it.”
“Related rates genuinely made me panic. Jessica drew the sliding-ladder problem three different ways until the picture made the equation write itself, and I went from a 71 to a 94 on the unit test. Nine sessions and she never once wasted my time on stuff I already knew.”