David Wei for RTE Scholars

Speaker: David Wei

David Wei: Hi, my name is David, I am a 2019 Paly graduate. My major is computer engineering. I'm currently a student at San José State University.

David Wei: One of the best thing about going to college is that you can be yourself, you can organize your own schedule. For example, you can have all the classes in the morning, you can have all the classes at night, you can have the classes only on the week days or you can have the on the weekends as well. You can choose which class you're going to take and you can choose which professor you want to take and you also get to choose what you can do in their free time as well.

David Wei: For me, one of the most important skills I learned at Paly and that my first language is not English, so when I am learning stuff on my own, I often struggles because I not only have to learn the stuff and the English with it and we also have to also learn to use English to actually learn the subject [content]. So one of the most important things I learned in my Paly [was] to work with groups. I found myself very good group learner and I use that skill, to bring it to my college, which is San Jose State University and I found a group of people who is like in a similar situation with me and we actually have the same major, so lucky for me, I guess to have a really good team. We have class together, we work on projects together and we also work on study for the exam together and that works out for me for the most of the time, so that is the most important skills that I learned at Paly, which is to work with groups

David Wei: One of the most challenging thing that I have faced is poor time management, especially, I think one year ago when I was taking a class that, it was just really hard for me. And, at that time I don't, I didn't find any friends or any classmates to help me with because it was still doing covid and learning on myself is not really a good way to learn for me. And plus that class has a lot of information to remember. And it had a lot of formula study to, uh, know. So that was the most challenging thing in my college with to learn subjects myself and also to seek out to find resources even if you're on your own. But I eventually overcome this. And it was a great learning experience for me as well.

David Wei: The person I want to thank most is Kimberley Schwan. She helped me the most during my time of difficulties, especially one was taking that class I mentioned last year, it was super hard for me and I basically, I was pretty I felt pretty down at that period because I was doing poorly in school and I had poor management and I was also struggling in personal life. But I think Kimberly reached out to me. She I think she finds out something [was] going wrong with me and she reached out to me too, um to try to help me ways and she did. She suggest me to reach out to my school's resource centers to seek for help. And I actually made a lot of friends who have a similar problem with me, similar problem. So we eventually form a study group and I eventually overcome this challenge - thanks to her.