Upon graduating, I used those skills to further pursue another passion of mine, rock climbing. I worked as a climbing guide, bringing people from all walks of life into my world and out of their comfort zones. I learned how to gently push people past their fears. I learned how to use a combination of encouragement and technical knowledge to help people reach their goals. I learned how to read people and find the roots of their struggles. Through this, I could discover the best way to approach each individual and create a plan of action that worked best for their unique needs. Through all of this, I learned of my passion for teaching. I went on to start tutoring students and combined both the critical thinking skills and technical knowledge from my degree in philosophy with the teaching skills that I learned from guiding climbing. I worked with students in a variety of subjects from math, to history, to writing. In every subject, I was able to help lead my students into developing their own critical thinking skills. I also encountered some of the same fear that I saw from people 100 feet up a rock face. I used my guiding experience to help one student overcome what had become a debilitating and illogical fear of math in order for her to pass a college placement test (which she had failed many times previously) so that she could go on to pursue her own passion of fashion design. Through all of my experiences, I have continued to pursue my passion for learning, and I hope to cultivate a similar passion in each of my students.

Rock Climbing, Photography, Crosswords