A closer look at Tom Kim, connoisseur for diverse cuisines, fan of soccer, and a therapist at Northview High School

Bedansh Pandey, Copy Editor

Tom Kim never foresaw himself becoming a school psychologist. 

In fact, even before he became interested in counseling as an occupation, Kim wanted to play professional soccer.  After living in South Korea for his junior and senior years, Kim came back to the United States and played soccer at his undergraduate university in Ohio. 

“So I played soccer in college, and soccer was something that big in my life. But soccer didn't work out,” Kim said. “And then when I was in college, I was a psychology major, and started really getting into the importance of mental health and learning more about how to help others with mental health related issues.”

Though Kim still dabbles in the occasional charity soccer game playing as a center, he no longer plays soccer the extent to which he did in college and high school. Instead, in his free time, he has shifted his focus to coaching soccer in Clarkston, GA and mentoring the students to help them reach their maximum potential as students and players. 

“I'm really passionate about seeing students get recruited to play in college,” Kim said. “During my free time, I try to kind of keep up with the players and see what's the best way I can help them.” 

Outside of his involvement with soccer, Kim is a PhD candidate at the University of Georgia, and currently holds his associate’s license in counseling. Prior to receiving his associate license, Kim had to take the National Counselor Examination (NCE) for which he was part of a program recognized by the  Council for the Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP). 

“The NCE is definitely less rigorous than the MCAT, and It's a lot more like understanding the concepts of counseling and kind of learning, like the ethical guidelines and most empirical guidelines for counseling,” Kim said. 

Kim has also active employed his identity as an Asian American while working in the Johns Creek area, which has a particularly high Asian population, to connect with the students that come to him on a much deeper level. 

“Tom and I often talk about anxiety as being incredibly high with all of the teens we see at John Creek and Northview,” Madeline Chiarella, Kim’s co-worker at Summitt Counseling, said. “He definitely has mentioned that he thinks that [being an Asian American] has been helpful because he has a personal understanding of that and professional experience that helps him connect with people a little bit more.” 

Chiarella is also an on-site therapist for Summitt Counseling, and she works at Johns Creek High School. However, she sees Kim on a weekly basis since they share an office space. As a result, she has been able to interact see the way that Kim functions as both a friend and a counselor. 

“I think that just his ability to be so personal and be somebody who others can relate to, and also still be somebody that people can trust gives him this, this leverage of more personal and intelligent, if that makes sense,” Chairella said. 

Interestingly, though, despite his accolades, Kim was not always the most academically-inclined student in high school. When he was a high school student, he always found the classes to be rather mundane, the contents of which he felt never really applied to him. 

“I remember my school counselor saying, ‘you'd be lucky if you get into college,’” Kim said. “Because I just didn't know how to study and I didn't really know how to academically succeed.  A lot of my time was just kind of spent on the field playing soccer.”

Both during and outside his job as a counselor, Kim strives to affect change within the adolescents because it is a struggle that he is all too familiar with. He believes that positive influences in a teenager’s life can go miles in the betterment of not only their high school career, but also the rest of their life. 

What I find interesting is just like, how, just the unique struggles that everybody kind of has, as they kind of navigate through life and school and college and whatnot,” Kim said. “I Just love that aspect of helping students and adolescents get to a place where they really want mentally, and just kind of psychologically.”