Growing up in Vancouver, British Columbia, I was the kid who couldn't wait to get to school in the morning. I liked learning, my report cards were full of A's, and a classroom felt like the easiest place in the world to be. I assumed that was how it would always go.
Then high school happened.
It felt like it changed overnight. Subjects that used to be easy stopped making sense. My grades went from A's to C's. I failed exams. I skipped class. Worst of all, I stopped caring, and I could feel myself not caring, which was its own kind of scary. My parents watched it happen. They'd always pictured a certain path for me, and now they were watching me drift off it, and it broke their hearts.
Meanwhile my friends were planning big futures. Medicine, computer science, engineering. Their excitement just made it more obvious that I had no idea what I was doing. I bounced between schools hoping a fresh start would fix it. Nothing stuck. I went to work at my dad's automotive shop for a while. He hoped it might light something in me. It didn't, and deep down I knew it wasn't where I was supposed to be.
I felt like I was sinking, and I was too embarrassed to tell anyone. I didn't ask for help. I figured nobody would understand.
Years went by like that. Then something shifted. It wasn't a lightning bolt, more a quiet feeling that I wanted my life back and was willing to give school one more try. I signed up for a college math class, cautiously hopeful. And then I sat in the lecture hall and every old feeling came rushing back. The equations blurred together on the board and my stomach tied itself in the same old knot. I tried the school's tutoring centre. It was crowded and impersonal, and I walked out feeling more alone than when I went in.
I didn't want the story to end the same way twice, so I looked for help somewhere else. The first few tutors didn't work out. Then I found one who did. He was patient. He encouraged me. He taught to me, not to a room, and complicated ideas started to feel reachable. For the first time in years I felt capable. My grades went from barely passing to 90s. But the grades weren't the real change. The real change was that I liked learning again. I'd honestly thought that part of me was gone for good.
Looking back, it was never just about math. It was about healing, and about finding out what the right support at the right time can do to a person. Between that tutor and my parents, who never stopped backing me even at my worst, I didn't just fix my grades. I changed how I saw myself.
I went on to finish my bachelor's degree, and then more than one graduate degree, which I once would have called impossible. But the most important thing I learned didn't come from a textbook. It was that nobody should have to figure out their education alone.
That's why I founded TutorLyft.
Through all of it, my parents stayed. I gave them a million reasons to give up on me, and they kept finding a million and one not to. I put them through a lot, more than once, and they never stopped showing up. I didn't see it at the time, but they were what kept me from going under. I know now how lucky that makes me.
