Khoa Tran

When I first came to the United States in 2016 with my family, pursuing a PhD degree in Biochemistry would have seemed impossible. As a nineteen-year-old Vietnamese immigrant, my first year in San Diego was focused on helping my family financially by finding a job and improving my English as quickly as I could. I was able to find a minimum wage position at a company named Ameditech Inc which made drug-testing products and at the same time sought out free English-as-a-Second-Language classes for adults at various locations including the San Diego Mesa College Continuing Education. I knew that my parents, who neither knew English nor received any university education, made the decision to immigrate to the US with the hope to provide me and my sister with a chance to acquire a better future. And, during this first year living in the USA, I also realized that if I came to the US and did not pursue education, I would indeed get stuck in a loop working minimum-wage positions. Thus, after seeking information about how to attend community college with financial support from the government, I successfully joined San Diego Mesa College as a half-time, first-generation college student with the help of Federal Pell Grant, CPG C-FAFSA/Dream Act, and Federal SEOG in the Fall of 2017, while still working in Ameditech Inc. At first, taking subjects in English, the registration process for courses, and the ‘foreign’ academic system seemed strange and intimidating, however I was not going to waste this opportunity, so I braced myself and dedicated all my time after work and on the weekends to my coursework. To prove my determination to succeed and achieve a better future, I studied hard and graduated from San Diego Mesa College as a valedictorian of the class of 2021 with the highest honors in both my Associate of Arts, Major: Liberal Arts and Sciences: Mathematics and Pre-Engineering - Mathematics and the CA, Intersegmental General Education Transfer. Then, I successfully got transfered to University of California - San Diego (UCSD) as a Biochemistry undergraduate student. Throughout my short two undergraduate years studying in UCSD, I have not only continued to performed academically well, but also been active in seeking out research opportunities, conducting research, and presenting research. My current goals are to pursue a doctorate program in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics or Biomedical, and eventually to pursue a research career in a major biotech or biomedical company.