After high school graduation, I decided to explore career options before college, to clarify what further education I needed. I started my own academic tutoring business in Houston, TX, and in 6 years, I covered all major subjects (English, History, Math, Science), at all levels of education up to university. I worked with students from the most prestigious high schools in Houston, public and private alike; I believe this was due, in large part, to my flier, on which I listed my credentials:...
After high school graduation, I decided to explore career options before college, to clarify what further education I needed. I started my own academic tutoring business in Houston, TX, and in 6 years, I covered all major subjects (English, History, Math, Science), at all levels of education up to university. I worked with students from the most prestigious high schools in Houston, public and private alike; I believe this was due, in large part, to my flier, on which I listed my credentials: a perfect score of 2400 on the SAT and 34 on the ACT; a total of 9 AP exams on which I earned the highest possible score of 5 (AP Calculus AB, Chemistry, English Literature, Art History, European History, US History, Psychology, Spanish Language, Spanish Literature); and several college essays on which I coached writing technique that were ultimately successful applications to prestigious schools near my familial home in the Bay Area, including Stanford University and UC Berkeley. Notably, I tutored one student with ADHD from 4th to 8th grade; in our first semester together, I helped raise her grade in math from C- to B+. At the collegiate level, my most intensive tutoring projects shepherded two students to graduation, specifically in Anthropology and Liberal Studies programs, through dense, voluminous material, including tracts of Socrates and Confucius, toward the embodiment of their ideas in lucid prose Yet the more I tutored, the more I saw that what the students needed was mental health support, and understandably so, given the turbulent situations ongoing in their family and friend group. On that basis, I decided to attend the University of Houston, which houses one of the top creative writing programs in the country, for two reasons. First, I needed an undergraduate degree as a stepping stone to the graduate certifications required to become a therapist. Second, I double-majored in English and Spanish, speak Vietnamese, subsequent to university, I have used these linguistic skills to reach diversity of students.
