All young people are bright. Even if they have Ds in their classes or scored 700 on the SAT or couldn’t take the SAT due to their learning differences, they are bright. Period. Don’t argue with me on this one. I’ve worked with young people who have gone to state schools, art schools, and Ivy League schools. They have all had bright, shiny minds. They may not have known it at the beginning of our process, but they certainly knew it by the end. They had gotten into at least one of their top 3 college choices. We had fun and laughed and got frustrated along the way. And they did it. How could they not be bright?

Okay, everyone is unique, I know. We are all at least slightly different from each other. Epigenetics is a real thing. That said, the people who come to me tend not to fit the mold of what one might see as ‘traditional learners’. I don’t necessarily mean that they get ‘bad grades’ or ‘suck at school’. Some of them do, and that’s ok. We can work with that. Some of them may be straight A students, but the way they get to the ‘A’ is not linear like their peers. They may skip ‘show your reasoning’ and just see the answer. They may not get to the answer at all, but their process is so innovative that they receive ‘As’ for ingenuity. So, I don’t mean that they prefer to collect taxidermy roadkill rather than play soccer or video games (although, if you do, that’s great-! Let’s make a portfolio of them for your application!). I mean that they approach things differently, they are non-conformists, they are ‘different learners’, out-of-the-box-thinkers, tinkerers, creatives…however you want to describe them, most people would see them as particularly and beautifully unique.

One of the best parts of working with students is getting to learn from them. I have learned about countless cultures and topics as diverse as the engineering of self-sustaining aquaculture, the language of Agwara dance, the history of graffiti / public art, model car collecting, connex based robots, all kinds of gaming, the new rapidly shifting vocabulary of spoken and written English and everything in between. I have been exposed to countless memes, laughed with students about their contents and references to other memes and been laughed at for totally misunderstanding everything about them.

Of course they are! These young people are about to do something revolutionary. It’s a Bat’Mitzvah meets Communion meets Bullet Ant initiation meets Quinceanera meets Khatam al Koran meets Hamar Cow Jumping, Seijin-no-Hi, Ji Li, and the Sunrise Ceremony. All of those at once. Google them. See how crazy this is. They may be 100% excited about it. They may be ambivalent. They may be absolutely terrified. Many have been told that this is the goal of their education and this next step is bound to elicit serious emotions.

Whether you live in Manhattan or Saskatchewan, Paris France or Paris Texas, Seoul or Xi’an (she-anne), I can work with you. I’ve worked with students on five continents, and I speak a few other languages than English, so that helps, but that’s not the point. If where you are from really matters, if it is an essential part of your identity, then we’ll use it. If it’s just a place you happen to have been born and still live that’s 8 time zones away, then we’ll find times to get together that work for both of us.