Tutor Spotlight – Jia Jun Chia


Jia Jun ChiaJia Jun Chia

Hometown: Singapore

Grade: 4th year PhD

Major: Bioengineering

What school do you serve? Ingraham High School

How long have you been with MESA? This is my 4th quarter tutoring with MESA.

Why did you join MESA? I’ve always wanted to get involved with tutoring, especially in the STEM subjects, but I didn’t get the chance to when I was in college. When I was presented the opportunity to tutor with Seattle MESA after coming to the UW, I immediately signed up to be a tutor.

What do you like most about tutoring for MESA? I like being able to help the students; it gives me great satisfaction when the students tell me that they understand the concepts better and that they’re doing well in Math class after coming to tutoring sessions.

What are the challenges that you’ve faced when tutoring? It’s been a while since I’ve been in high school, and I’m a little rusty in certain concepts. I usually end up referring to their textbooks, asking another tutor, or looking it up on Google—which also shows the students that they can always make use of other resources.

Fun fact(s) about yourself: I used to be a synchronized swimmer. My tongue can touch my nose! I looooveee penguins and have a lot of penguin-related items.

Hobbies and Interests: I like playing strategy board games. I’m also really interested in forensics. I love watching Forensic Files (I think I’ve watched most, if not all of the 400 episodes), and I’m considering becoming a forensic scientist after graduation. I thought about majoring in forensics in college but it was probably too specialized.

If you could be one pizza ingredient, what would you be and why? Pizza sauce. I like to work in a team, and be the one to hold the team together, like how the pizza sauce holds the ingredients on the pizza. But I don’t want to be the center of attention; everyone always focuses on the ingredients, but nobody ever focuses on the sauce.

 

By Jia Jun Chia