Welcome to Praxis: Interview with Brandon Nguyen

Liew, Christina. “Night Shoot.” 2019. JPG.

This semester, we here at Praxis are adding a new member to our team: a Digital Content Manager, who will be helping us put out the blog, our digital issue, and social media together, making our web presence even better.

We’re excited to get started, so without further ado, let’s welcome Brandon Nguyen to the team!

Hi Brandon

Where are you from, and how did you end up here at the University of Texas at Austin?

I’m from Richardson, Texas! It’s one of the suburbs neighboring Dallas.

Up until sophomore year of high school, I was pretty set on the medical field and becoming a pediatrician so my dream school at that point and time was Baylor University. Out of the blue, my mother, who is very immersed in the asian culture, surprised me with “Chase your dreams. I just want you to be happy with what you do.” To simply put it, my entire world had just crumbled. What she had said to me made me really question what my passions were. The medical field was something I picked up because I thought my mom would’ve eventually pushed it on me, so my logic was that I would just beat her to the finish line. So at that point, I really did not know what to do with myself. I no longer had something to chase, so I really spent the remainder of my time in high school trying to figure out what I was really about. Senior year came around and I still did not know what I wanted to do or be. Despite this, the only other college I’ve ever looked at aside from BU was UT, so I just kind of went with it. I applied to UT and I visited the campus and decided I was going to UT. Did I fall in love with UT when I visited? Not particularly, no. Was I happy that I at least found somewhere I thought I could grow? Very much so.

What about future plans? Where are you in your degree program? Do you know what you might be working toward?

As for future plans, as of right now, I’m just focused on the immediate future and school and setting myself up for the far future because if I think too much about the far future, I get very anxious and nervous. I still don’t really know what I want to do career-wise, but I am trying my best and just hoping that everything will eventually work itself out. I’m about halfway finished with my degree program but I do want two certificates so I’m okay with graduating late to get the certifications I want. I’m in no rush.

And how about the University Writing Center? What’s your history working here at the UWC, and what drew you to the center? Have you spent a lot of time in Writing Centers before now?

Coming into UT, the United Leadership Network offered me a scholarship and the scholarship entailed many following opportunities on top of the money they were already awarding me. One of the opportunities (and one of our requirements) was to find an internship for our second year at UT. They set up an internship fair for their students and one of the tablers happened to be a person who worked for the UWC. I’m a Rhetoric & Writing major, so at the time, I thought I should have done something with writing. The UWC was the first one that I went to. I set up an interview with Alice [the Assistant Director of the UWC], and the rest is history. The UWC here at UT is my first time ever having anything to do with writing centers and personally, I think it’s really neat. As for what I’ve done here at the UWC, I’ve just mainly learned about what keeps the place running and thriving.

Are there any especially memorable moments from your time working at the UWC that our readers might find interesting?

During the first few weeks here, I was tasked with interviewing everybody on the core admin staff to get a better feel for who they are and how this center is run by these people. It was really interesting to see how everyone got to where they currently are and how their role comes into play when considering the bigger picture.

You’ve only been on the job here at Praxis for a couple of weeks, but what are you looking forward to the most? What do you hope to get out of this experience?

I live for experience. I don’t know what I want to do in the future, so at this point in time I’m just trying to do my best at whatever the tasks are at hand. I’m looking forward to becoming more acquainted with how Praxis works and I hope to gain skills that I can later use in whatever field I choose to follow.