CJ Paul Knight-Step

I am highly academics achievement and overall personal achievement oriented, and found for the short time I taught as a substitute teacher in Advanced Placement/Honors Chemistry more rewarding than the Managing Junior Scientist in the High Throughput Genotyping Lab while working in a small capacity on the renown Human Genome Project for a West Coast Division of Celera, Corp., who had originally sequenced the human genome.

I quit further studies and a PhD Candidacy for work as I began to believe academic research was no longer my course, and getting into the field was more germain, and the iron was now hot for Genomics in the Private Sector. I predicted I would miss the fun, if I was lounging in Academia. I was correct in that assessment at least, but now not having the PhD to fall back on is difficult to continue research at the level I was at with the contraction of Corporate Opportunities since, especially COVID.

I decided to not buck the trend and return to what I do best-- help younger minds find ways to consume knowledge like I did.

I graduated High School Top 2% in the Nation, and was a Track & Field Athlete. Being a scholar athlete requires tremendous self-discipline and organisation. You must find solutions to the age old problem of fitting enough work and life balance in that simple 24 hour framework for an academic year.

Personally, I believe we as a Nation are getting further behind. It is fact actually. I have contact with Europe Regularly and their students are much better prepared especially in STEM and Humanities than we.

Furthermore, not everybody learns nor excels the same in all areas. It does not mean somebody is a poor student. It means more likely, they have, if anything, deficient instruction, a one-size fits all. I find that usually there are three learners, in a gross over simplification if the field of human learning, visual, aural and those who need both, just to comprehend a subject. Now to have them retain it requires other methods of equating complex and abstract science and mathematics to actual concrete consummable form.

It is the only way a person then actually learns, rather than attempts shoving useless disconnected concepts into one's head. If there is no connection, learning is not achieved.

I come from the side of the learner, who when at times failed by instructors, wanted to understand regardless, so I am largely half self-taught.

There were courses so poorly taught in college the only reason to go to class was to know what we being covered, and then go figure out what was NOT BEING TAUGHT AND LEARN it, even if I had to ask other professors to help me.

I wish to do my little part to change all of that.

Sincerely,

Caleb John "CJ" Paul Knightstep