About Melissa Maribel
Hi, I’m Melissa Maribel.
I have my Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry, over ten years of tutoring experience and a jar full of tears caused by my Chemistry classes when I was in college. Through my own failures, I have been able to understand the struggles and discouragement most students face when taking Chemistry. This is why I am so passionate about simplifying Chemistry and encouraging students to keep pursuing their career goals. I truly believe that each student is capable of learning Chemistry with the right resources, like my YouTube channel, my step-by-step Chemistry how-to guides, notes and flashcards.
Would you believe that I never thought I would be a Chemistry educator or even a chemist?
I actually majored in Chemistry to pursue a career in Dentistry. That’s right, I wanted to be a Cosmetic Dentist and I even became a dental assistant in high school, interned for several dentists, took the DAT, did a few research projects and even won a dentistry science competition.
My life at the time was centered around teeth and pursuing dentistry taught me a lot about the application process for getting into medical and dental school. It was a very difficult decision to say goodbye to this career path and choose another, but I felt as though I was being called to make an impact elsewhere.
In college I had 3 jobs: I worked as a tutor, a receptionist for a math department and a tutor/scribe for the disability office. I fell in love with teaching and seeing the impact I was making in so many students’ lives. I found a way to explain complicated concepts and restore student’s confidence in their abilities.
After graduating in 2015, I became a full-time private tutor focusing on Math and Chemistry. I would sit at a coffee shop from 8am to 8pm, Monday through Sunday, just tutoring student after student. I was getting known around town as everyone’s favorite tutor and at one point I even had a waiting list of students. Seeing the success of my little tutoring business, I realized I needed to find a way to reach more students and that’s what lead me to start my YouTube channel in 2017.
To my surprise the channel was getting a lot of positive feedback and it grew much faster than I imagined. I’ve always wanted to find a career where I could make the biggest impact and I’m humbled to say that I found my calling.
In 2018, I won a major contest called YouTube Nextup which is a contest held by YouTube. It is a 5 day creator camp where you learn how to grow your channel and improve your video production skills. This came with a voucher for new video equipment so I was able to upgrade my production quality, learn new skills and get that stamp of approval from YouTube. In the summer of 2018, I left my full time tutoring job, said goodbye to my cozy little apartment and moved back in with my parents to focus on creating more Chemistry videos and resources for students.
Overall my vision is to teach creatively through my educational resources so that students can continue in the sciences and begin to associate learning with growth rather than difficulty and boredom.