Jenny is one of the busier students on the Skyline college campus. Between her ballet practices, gymnastics training, archery, and harp and piano instruction, it is hard to believe that she has any time for her college schoolwork at all. By the way, would you have ever guessed that she is only 14 years old?
Jenny Vo Phamhi could be described as a wunderkind. At the young age of 14 and technically still in the 9th grade, Phamhi is taking the full 11 units at Skyline allowed to concurrent high school students. She is currently preparing to take her PSAT and is completing her high school coursework through home study, so she will have time to conquer the grueling nonacademic side of her schedule. However, her work outside of Skyline does little to impede her ability to awe her instructors here at the college.
“I am now completing my 39th year of teaching at the college level, and I have not until now had such a young and extraordinary student as Jenny,” says Skyline College Professor James I. Wong. “Additionally, I can see that she is such a good person. She inspires me to become a better instructor and a better person.”
Phamhi’s weekly schedule is busy enough to make most people dizzy just by looking at it. She attends four ballet practices a week, each one lasting over an hour. Phamhi also practices piano for 45 minutes each day and attends gymnastics practice once a week, not to mention her once-a-week archery training. However, learning and playing the harp is the most valuable and cherished part of her extracurricular activities.
Phamhi practices the harp for over an hour every day, and one of the best is teaching her. Douglas Rioth is San Francisco Symphony’s principal harpist and Phamhi’s harp instructor. She understands what a huge financial commitment it was for her mother to secure such a renowned instructor for her, and so she pours her heart and soul into it.
Her current Skyline academic schedule includes a hybrid online/classroom biology class, tennis so she can learn to beat her cousins, and what is turning out to be her new love and possible new career goal, creative writing. “I really like writing, creative writing,” Phamhi says. “Writing is a difficult career and there’s a lot of uncertainties about it. As rewarding as it may be if you are successful, I still love science–maybe I’ll be a journalist for a science magazine.”
When asked who she credits for her success, she immediately says her mother, who is a doctor of ophthalmology, and then her principal at Parkside Intermediate School in San Bruno, Angela M. Addiego. The trust and leeway given to Phamhi by Addiego to pursue her studies in a way unique to her allowed Phamhi to develop the self-discipline she would need for her high-speed rise through academia. Phamhi’s principal from her intermediate school is proud that she is attending Skyline, but by no means shocked.
“Jenny being at Skyline does not surprise me as she was taking high school and college classes when she was in middle school (and getting A’s),” wrote Addiego via email. “In fact, I expect her to finish junior college in a year and head off to a university to earn her degree and higher-level degrees before she is twenty years old.”
When asked how the rest of her Skyline classmates could learn the secret to her monumental time management skills and attain the same self-discipline needed to achieve at her high level, her answer was simple and applied to every aspect of her life.
“I just tell myself you get it done now, so you don’t have to do it later,” Phamhi says.
If you would like to hear an example of Phamhi’s creative writing, she will be appearing on November 19, 2011 at the Third Annual Performance Arts Showcase at the Skyline College Theater at 7:30 p.m. to recite a spoken word piece.
