Kim

“When I started Highline, I was desperate for a way out. As a recent immigrant from Vietnam, high school was a bitter reminder that even though I had mastered the American language, I did not understand the culture.”

Kim on the Honors Program

September 20, 2004. This was the day I stepped foot on Highline Community College’s campus as a “college freshman” while also a high school junior.

My U.S. educational experience, up until that point, had been like a tape played in a crazy, fast-forward motion. Just three years earlier, I arrived in America as an immigrant, speaking no English. After eight laborious months, I had managed to gain college-level reading comprehension, only to be advised by a counselor to take a Drama class instead of a Freshman Honors English course because of my lack of fluency.

Highline became my haven, and for the first time in three years, I felt comfortable being at school. Fall quarter went by like a flash, and just a few days before my finals, I got a surprising e-mail from my writing instructor. He recommended that I join the Honors Scholar Program.

Within the first few weeks of Honors 100, it became apparent that I could no longer go through life as the unnoticed Asian immigrant. Dr. Barbara Clinton, as well as other instructors, for reasons still mysterious to me even until this very day, believed that I was gifted, that the story I wrote for my first personal statement was good enough to be published, and that I really had a shot at being accepted at some private, prestigious liberal arts institution.

By the time I graduated from Highline Community College in June 2006, I was an Honors Scholar, Lead Writing Consultant of the Writing Center, Chapter Vice President of Phi Theta Kappa, and Treasurer of the Creative Writing Club. I continued on to major in English at Whitman College as a Gates Millennium and W. O. Douglas Scholar.

After graduating in 2008 Summa Cum Laude, I entered the Ph.D program in English at the University of Washington with a Hilen Graduate Fellowship in American Literature and Culture, and a University of Washington’s Top Scholar Award. I earned my Master’s degree in winter 2010 and spent my summer in Vietnam, taking courses in Vietnamese language and literature to supplement my Ph.D research with the aid of a Foreign Languages and Area Studies Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education. The knowledge and mentoring I’ve received in the Honors Program at Highline Community College continues to stay with me as I encounter more opportunities and challenges in higher education.