IN SESSION Juniors Tina Tran and Phillip Tran are brainstorming for their UC applications.
Photo courtesy of Colin Nguyen
By Diane Tran
California School Foundation (CSF) club gave an opportunity for fellow pirates to attend a UC workshop at Educational Park Library from Oct.18 to Nov. 1. It is a program created by Kevin Tran, an alumnus from Independence High School who is now a student at UC Berkeley, which assists high-school students with the UC application as well as a step-to-step approach to reduce the amount of stress for the students.
Mr. Tran had the intention of helping other students and asked his community to see if there was enough interest.
“The idea immediately gained a lot of support so I decided to plan it—only I wanted to do it my own way. I wanted students to not only avoid procrastinating and be less stressed out about the process, but also become their own self advocates so they may better represent themselves in their personal statements and better yet, in their lives,” explained Mr. Tran.
The workshop is self-planned by Mr. Tran. He explains that he does not plan much for the workshop but just a rough outline on how he wants the session to flow.
“Since my main focus is self-advocacy aspect, I only need to research the more concrete and explicit writing tips. Much of what I do during the workshop is ‘in the moment’ in other words, I analyze the student’s various contexts to direct my presentation of the material,” describes Mr.Tran.
High school students, specifically PHHS students, are very grateful for him to be able to guide them through this process.
“I went to the first session and it was based on self-advocacy. So, we got to reflect on our lives and ourselves in general more, and I got to appreciate myself more. I felt like I was able to dig deeper into myself because usually school stresses so much that I just put myself down more than I try to talk about myself” states junior Tina Tran.
By going to the workshop, students were able to take stress off.
“I learned to not procrastinate through his workshop; it seems like a general rule but for college applications. It’s really important to be organized to lessen the stress load overall,” indicates junior Phillip Ly.
CSF has brought awareness to the workshop by mentioning it into their weekly general meetings. Mr. Tran and CSF both have had an impact on the students that went.
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