Why Cupcakes Matter To Me

Fishes!  Found from "Hello, Cupcake"

Dulce de Leche Cupcakes, my own invention. <3 hispanic="" td="">

To me, cupcakes are simple, easy treats that most people like.  Frosting a cupcake lets me concentrate on something small and minor, but gives me very tangible results. The instant feedback is something that I wish I could get from every student, every project, every teacher.

I'm going to be teaching again this summer.  True, I will be working in Spain at a summer camp that is more designed to have rich kids return back to it, but I value the process of teaching so much.  I value education.  I don't really care if my students like me, but I do want them to enjoy their summer and love English as much as I love Spanish.

Spanish is one of my passions in life.  Reconnecting with my heritage, developing a skill-set, experiencing Spain for over a year? I would love if one of my students felt that way about English.  If I could get one kid fired up about English, that might be better than one of my cupcakes.  Quizas, quizas, quizas.

Every Child Wants to Learn: Reflections on Growing Up with an Achievement Gap

Balancing Acts, by Natasha Warikoo, can be summarized with the somewhat logical conclusion that all children want to learn.  Their desire to learn is influenced by cultural underpinnings and current social hierarchies, which may make the counterfactual seem more than apparent.  (Warikoo gave a lecture at One Harvard, which I think is a pretty solid summary of what she does.)

All children want to learn.

That's actually quite shocking and may not always ring true for former teachers.  Ever try to teach a middle-schooler anything...at all?  I would literally prefer a colonoscopy.  (After all, Katie Couric seems to enjoy them)

Sitting in West Virginia, I have come to wonder if my education was a fluke.  I'm not cognitively gifted, by any stretch of the word.  My IQ just barely qualified me for a gifted program, allowing me to skip a few grades...but I'm not a genius.  Had I gone to a better school, I would have been able to stay in the classroom and not needed to be pulled out for "enrichment."

As a kid, school was my refuge.  I was able to go and play.  I never thought of school as a chore, because I was able to go and have fun.  I got free lunch, free breakfast, was never yelled at, and got to read pretty much anytime I wanted.  Can you talk about chubberkin paradise?

I'm always surprised about the things that I forget or have blocked out about my childhood.  I was poor, and lived below the poverty line for much of my young adulthood.  That fact has never left me. It has simply been polished into something that glitters, an opener for my essay into Harvard.  A fact that I mention at cocktail party fundraisers, to the people that assumed I was born with a silver spoon dangling from my lips.

My mother handled our poverty as best she could.  When the lights were cut off, we would cook chicken over candles in the living room.  When we bounced from home to home in rapid succession, I never thought that it was anything other than an adventure. I certainly never considered us homeless, even when I slept on a chair in my aunt's living room for months on end. When the police were called to our home for domestic violence, it was something that was blocked out of my memory and turned into a "My mama could beat up your mama.  Just ask her ex-boyfriend."

Being at home, I get strange flashbacks.  Driving past a childhood friend's house, I remember his parents always inviting me to dinner and now understand the rationale behind it.  I remember a stranger's mumbling that "white trash begets white trash" when the police were called to my house and I was rushed outside.  I remember crying in school and vomiting with no provocation. These moments are painful, but all of it galvanizes my resolve to actually do something meaningful with my life.  I am immensely privileged and I can work to help do something better with my life.

I beat the odds, which is something I don't actually feel comfortable saying. I don't like to be reminded of the serious misgivings that a statistician would have about my tale.  Highly mobile students are at risk. 32% of my community lives in a poverty with a 14 point achievement gap in my high school. My high school. I don't want that to be my narrative, and I have cognitive dissonance over whether or not someone from my community should use my story to motivate students.  There are huge systemic problems that exist and actually passing college was pretty horrible.  (The Washington Post reminded me of conversations with my parents, in which I discussed dropping out.)

Both mine and my community's narratives are exceptionally relevant to economic and societal growth.  A Ted Talk that I watched concluded with,

"The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie )

Unfortunately, my community's narrative has been summarized with a lack of opportunity. If my community is ever going to thrive; if my niece is ever going to kick-ass in high school and get a bomb scholarship to a flagship public school or great private school, narratives need to change.  We need to adopt the idea that all children want to learn and that all children will do both good and well.  A lot of fluke events allowed me to get where I was and I would be nothing without the support of my family, friends, and universities. Though my narrative is one filled with black swans, it shouldn't be one atypical of my community.  If all children want to learn, then let's teach them.

Misaligned Incentives

Ask any economist and they will be able to tell you that one of the largest problems between employers and employees is the idea of misaligned incentives.  Think about hourly vs. wage craft workers.  Wage workers seem to take a long time, while salary workers might do shoddy work.  If synergy exists between the bourgeoise and proletariat, well then...jooooder, you are going to do well, and everything should be just fine and dandy.

I don't know what I want.

Well, actually, like Veruca Salts, I know what.  I want the world; Don't care how, I want it now.

I spend mornings looking at houses and apartments in Denver, wondering if I should buy one.  For a tax break.  To put down roots.  To have an actual asset, rather than the clothes or degrees that I seem to pursue.

I then start to look at international fellowships, wondering what other accolade I can dump onto my resume.  Never being able to admit that maybe I don't need to win anything else.  I can't accept that I've done a great deal in my life and that people aren't somehow wondering how I get in to the party.

I look into further graduate school: law school, Ph.D. programs, and MBAs swirl in my mind.  I can't seem to think of everything that I need and want.  My grades seem too low.  I don't know what I'm interested in doing long-term.

I don't know what is my problem, and I wish more than anything that I worked at an organization that had a solid career path.  I want to become an education consultant and work with districts to help incorporate foreign-born citizens and immigrant students into their program.  I want to open and work with a charter school that emphasizes global citizenship and has a comprehensive bilingual education program.  And for fuck's sake, I want to be thin and rich.  I honestly don't think that is too much to ask for.

On September 1st, I'm going to start my intense diet again.  I'm also going to open an IRA in late August, in an attempt to be responsible.

I don't know what I want.  I wish that I had misaligned incentives, and not this jumblefuck of thoughts, emotions, desires, and qualms that keep me up at night.

Baby steps.

So....what's new?

Everyday, without fail, my father asks: "Jimmy, what's up for tomorrow?"

I always grumble the same "whatever."  Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.  "I may not shower."

I have been at home for 11 days now.  This time has been spent bumbling around the broader West Virginia/Pennsylvania community and doing very little of merit. I wrote a blog post that I submitted to the Huffington Post, am putting on feelers to start a not-for-profit, and throwing away all of my earthly possessions.

I quite like the blog post that I wrote.  It's in praise of student loans, which seems strange given my current financial situation.  But, we have privileges that so many folks across the world don't.  It's nice to acknowledge those.  Let's see if it gets accepted and printed?

To get into the mindset of getting rid of everything, I have started to watch American Pickers with my mother.  Watching it makes me sick.  Seriously, I want to just clean everything and never have more stuff than I need.  In that vein, I have gotten rid of loads of clothes and books.

Part of getting rid of things though means going through old things, and I have found so many hidden treasures.  I love finding old fraternity glasses, school projects, and books that were half-read.  It reminds me how great my life has been.  It has been filled with love and joy.  I am truly blessed with amazing friends and a well-intentioned family.

As for the not-for-profit, I want to partner with Freedom and provide college counseling services to students interested in elite schools.  I have gotten about 30 likes on a Facebook post and no response from the principal.  Let's see what can happen.  Life is a thrill ride.

A Quilt of Many Colors

Okay, I promise my parents and I have a normal relationship.  I love them, but I'm not like creepy obsessed with them.  We aren't besties, we don't tweet to one another.  In fact, you're more likely to see me scream at them for a minor inconvenience or expect them to drop everything to attend to any whim.

I'm tough to manage.

But, today, they gave me a (late) birthday present.  This quilt is comprised of t-shirts from high school and it is something that I have wanted for years.  It is loaded with old fraternity letters, Carnegie Mellon, Spain, musical, CUTIES, and college t-shirt.

I absolutely love and cherish it.  My parents have been doing really well lately.  I might put them into a fancy home when they need it.

Nightmares of Mediocrity

“You come into life with advantages which will disgrace you if your success is mediocre. And if you do not rise to the head not only of your profession, but of your country, it will be owing to your own laziness, slovenliness, and obstinacy.” 

--John Addams to John Quincy Addams 

Last night I stayed up late, panicking about my future. In my late night stupor, I was convinced that I wasn't doing enough to change the world and garner financial freedom.  I am aware that I've already done a lot, but so many people have done so much more.  There is still an achievement gap, blatant inequality for LGBTQ, and world poverty. There is so much to do that it produces anxiety.

I'm a mix of contradictions: a yuppie born in the backwoods, a teacher who is out of the classroom, a Spaniard limited with an American passport.  Because of all of these conflicting identities, I never really know who I am.  Am I the kid that grew up below the poverty line or am I the adult that takes 6 week vacations to Europe just for the hell of it?  Am I the smart kid that went to Harvard or the boy that barely passed graduate school?

With all of these contradictions swirling in my mind, I have three big goals: make my parents happy, gain financial independence, and help others.  I genuinely want to be a role model for my community and help people succeed.  My definition of doing well is: multilingual, globe-trotting, and well-educated.  (Well-educated to me means having the capacity for original thought, an intense analytic skill-set, and the idea of "well rounded with sharp corners."  It's not necessarily correlated to prestigious universities, but I do have faith in them.)

Because my ideals conflict, I feel as though I am never doing the right thing and always want to doing something else.  This combined with my subpar work ethic and lack of upper-level cognitive capacity leaves me restless.

I want to do good, but I also need to do well.  How do I mitigate those two gaps?  Do I have to be an industry leader or Senator for those needs to be met?  Do I need more education (and a terminal degree) to signal (to myself) that I'm done?

I honestly don't know, and I'm not sure that I ever will.  There's a big part of me that just wants serenity, the peacefulness of complacency.  But, for every inaction I take, the world seems to become worse off. The same graduation speech that gave me the quotation that started this post, also told me that everyone changes the world.  But, I feel like if I don't make a systemic change that makes the world better, I let my privilege down.  I let my country down.  Worse still, I left myself down.

The One That I Thank My Parents

I grew up below the poverty line, where an overwhelming lack of opportunity continues to scar the region.  People don't dream of the ivy league, and settle for whatever is easiest after high school. Higher education isn't for everyone (much like Harvard may not have really been for me).  However, I do believe that every student should have the capacity to enter a college should they choose to do so.  I think that teachers, counselors, and administrators need to encourage all children to have some post high-school plans, making sure that students are college or career ready.

Though Pittsburgh might be an hour away, it feels like it is a foreign country.  Pittsburgh, though not the metropolis of NYC or Boston, does allow for a diversity of thought, racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual identities.  These certainly don't exist in my tiny hamlet of the world, and this lack of diversity negatively impacts the region. Period.

My Father is the worst at pictures.

While this sounds like borderline rhetoric perched high atop a soapbox,  I am jarringly reminded of the shortcoming of my high school whenever I come home.  Sitting in West Virginia now, I am extremely thankful that my parents always put me first and did everything they could for me.  Was everything perfect?  Hell to the no. Looking back, I want to just sit them down and say, "really, you think that's a good plan?" But, they did their absolute best, with the limited examples and information that they had available. The teachers and counselors who knew better and limited me based on my heritage and socio-economic status?  Well, fuck them.  Their lack of ambition is what is causing an achievement and opportunity gap in this country.

Let's be honest, I am crazy.  Like, the I-should-be-medicated kind of crazy.  I've always been this way, though.  I've always had ridiculously high expectations for myself and others.  I wanted designer clothes, spending money, a white picket fence, and attention.  Imagine my current level of hyperbole and attention-seeking behavior with hormones raging.  It's not a pleasant scene.

My parents and I at the Harvard Club

My parents put me first.  Sacrificed so that I would be able to get ahead and tried to understand my crazy.  Yes, they made me crazier sometimes.  But, they tried their best. They made me fiercely autonomous and independent.  I could live on my own, since I was 8, thank-you-very-much.  The fact that they taught me all of that when I was young and coddle me now? Well, that's just love and extra awesome for this unemployed graduate.

So, my dearest family, thank you for supporting me.  Thank you for talking me through Carnegie Mellon and not letting me drop out. Thank you for telling me to put myself first.  Thank you for always keeping the door open.  Thank you for giving me a month's rent when I was fired.  Thank you for thinking that I am the smartest young man in the world, even though I just barely passed Harvard.  I only hope that my little ones will get such an experience.

Facebook thinks that we look similar?  I don't see it.