1. Friday, June 26th
, 2015 Adam Laten Willson
106 Ridge Road
Jupiter, FL 33477
561-371-9896
alatenwillson@gmail.com
Dear Future Employer,
My name is Adam Laten Willson, and I would like to be considered for the position of tutor. To
this end, please allow me to share some of my background and current outlook with you. I have also
attached a resume for your perusal.
One slogan very close to my heart is attributed to Socrates: 'The unexamined life is not worth
living.'
But often, too little attention is paid to the requirements of thorough examination. And children
are often poorly provided with effective tools for examination. I would like to help others, younger and
less experienced than myself, to achieve clarity along their intellectual pursuits. I also look forward to
the opportunity of learning from perspectives wholly different from mine.
Formally, I have a wide scope of studies under my belt. In 2007, I graduated with a B.A. in
Liberal Arts from St. John's College (Santa Fe, NM). This unique college prides itself for its rigorous,
unicurricular program derived from The Great Books Program. For 4 years, we explored coursework
that included everything from Ancient Greek language to polyphonic theory, from non-Euclidean
geometry to Ptolemaic astronomy to Faulkner. The coursework was almost exclusively based on
primary-source readings – sometimes in translation, sometimes in the original - and was executed
through seminar-styled discussions. Here are only some of the reputed works that were discussed:
Herodotus' Histories, Descartes' Discourse on Method, Lavoisier's Elements of Chemistry, Palestrina's
Sicut Cervus, Hobbes' Leviathan, Montaigne's Essays, Plato's Republic, Newton's Principia
Mathematica, Heidegger's What is Metaphysics?, The Canterbury Tales in Middle English, The Iliad,
Tolstoy's War and Peace, Racine's Phèdre, Euclid's Elements, Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, and
Harvey's On the Motion of Blood in Animals.
Before attending St. John's, I spent several years working, traveling, and studying at various
institutions. I was a studio art major at Bard College, excelled in Community College of Rhode Island's
(CCRI) philosophy department, and attended Palm Beach Community College for degree requirements.
By the time that I considered St. John's, I was already well-versed and (sadly) disenchanted with the
educational protocol and method I witnessed among these institutions of higher learning. St. John's
College promised a different style of education: one more suited to my interests, one that emphasized
the importance of hands-on learning, of the historical development of ideas that serves as a bedrock for
the sciences and arts of today, and the importance of an investment and urgency regarding self-
knowledge. I'm happy to report that they made good on this promise.
I've always been an intellectual self-starter. When I was about 10 years old, I began inventing
my own solar system, replete with an interplanetary political history, geographical maps, and a lingua
franca called Romethesian. When I was 15, I became obsessed with some Russian language
phrasebooks I found at my grandmother's house. By Fall of 1998, I had taught myself basic Russian
and attended a month-long Russian immersion camp in MN. I was fortunate to have attended Dreyfoos
School of the Arts as a high school Creative Writing student, and I dare say this early formative
experience helped pave the way for my future intellectual drive. Over the years, I have cultivated an
accountable taste for historical and modern world literature. I am also knowledgeable in art history and

2. history of philosophy and the sciences.
Educational outreach work has always been important to me. While a student at Bard, I tutored
learning-challenged students in the Hudson River Valley. For a year at CCRI, I was paid as a work-
study College Algebra tutor. In 2002, I lived and worked at an outreach compound in Orland, ME
called H.O.M.E. There I organized an Intro to Russian Language course and tutored an autistic teen in
reading comprehension.
For two years at St. John's, while serving as Editor-in-Chief of the college newspaper, I was also
co-chair of the Student Committee on Instruction. Not only did we have regular concourse with the
dean's office and influenced curriculum and hiring decisions, we also led many extracurricular reading
courses. I personally led a course in Latin American literature and one on Thomas Kuhn's The
Structure of Scientific Revolution, among others.
From 2009 to 2010, I led a writer's workshop in Manhattan. To this day, I continue to seek out
educational opportunities for myself and others, believing whole-heartedly in a mutual educational
model, where students and teachers are able to instruct and inform each other.
I believe education in its core is a communal enterprise, and I promote direct, hands-on learning
in small groups or one-on-one settings. In today's educational climate of rote-testing and abstracted
performance evaluation, I believe it's crucial to retain the human interaction that is in my opinion at the
center of education.
I appreciate your consideration. Please don't hesitate to email or call me with further questions
or to arrange an interview. My email address is alatenwillson@gmail.com, and my phone number is
561-371-9896.
Thank you,
Adam Laten Willson