My 3rd year at Rise Kohyang Middle School presented me with a new set of challenges in the form of a very difficult class. And yet, I overcame it using the same basic strategies of teaching in the previous year: sarcasm and sternness.
Teaching wasn’t as fun this year, especially when my door was torn down during a door decorating contest. And yet I persevered, continuing fun activities such as Builder’s Club volunteering with students on the weekends with my free time.
I still enjoyed taking the students on various field trips throughout the course of year, which included Medieval Times for history-related curriculum and America’s Got Talent for fundraising purposes.
I was in charge of the school’s Student News this year, where we released DAILY episodes for kids to watch in Advisory. They generally liked it, and I’d like to think I was instrumental in giving “birth” to it so to speak.
Of course I was saddened to see my favorite set of 8th graders leave this year as well.
Despite having a more annoying Advisory, they were still fun and had the most books read as always, slaying the competition in the process.
I lived in Alhambra for the next 2 years, making fun memories hanging out in Los Angeles with my co-workers as often as I could.
I received an email from SPJA (Anime Expo), saying that Assistant Manager positions were available in the Registration department. I decided to apply, not knowing that this would forever change my life. When accepted, I had no idea what I was doing as Assistant Manager, and didn’t really know until the actual convention. This subsequently led to a summer where I met some pretty amazing people and had some fantastic memories. Of course, meeting Katherine Pham was the highlight, not knowing she would be my future wife. I saw she was sick and coughing it up, and offered her some Emergen-C to help relieve her symptoms. Slipping a business card in her bag, I didn’t make anything of the experience, glad I made yet another friend. Of course it would take a future encounter to seal our fate.
