Byron

At Princeton, I worked as a teaching assistant for the intensive summer study-abroad course in Marine Biology at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, where I taught precepts about species identification, lab reports, and data analysis, and gave a full-length lecture on cephalopods. As part of my duties I also organized in-lab exercises and field work, assisted in writing and grading quizzes, exams and lab reports. I was chosen from the previous year’s students by the professors for having “the perfect combination of marine interests, intellectual abilities, and social skills.” I also worked as a Physics 101 tutor at Princeton's McGraw Center for Learning, and I was recommended by a professor to become a writing advisor at Princeton's Writing Center.

In the year after I graduated from Princeton, I taught English at a K-12 boarding school in Southern Thailand in a fishing village that was devastated by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. There I learned a lot about teaching, student-teacher relationships, and about myself. It was an incredible experience, and I miss my students every day. I hope to return to Thailand to visit some of my star pupils and see how they have progressed since I left!

During my time teaching in Thailand I was blessed with the opportunity to travel extensively throughout Asia and learn a lot about Southeast Asian cultures in particular. I hope to return to Thailand, or move to Hong Kong, my birthplace, and work for an environmental NGO to contribute to mounting efforts to control climate change/marine degradation.