650 Words

Milan Marrero graduated from Parker in 2014. As a junior in my American Lit class, he yukked it up all year long and learned a few things along the way. He was and is a very likable young man. Last week we ran a piece by Natalie Schmidt about the shackles of perfectionism -- about how holding yourself to impossibly high standards can set you up for a big fall in the future. Milan’s story is the exact opposite. Nobody would have ever called Milan an overachiever -- I can imagine his blast of incredulous laughter at the mere suggestion of it. In the end, though, this is still a story about regret, only the regret is about wasted opportunities rather than perfectionism. Ironically, Natalie and Milan reach some of the same conclusions in the end. In high school, Milan was lazy and arrogant. He was something of a troublemaker -- a friendly, good-natured, back-slapping sort of troublemaker, but a troublemaker just the same. As you’ll see from his post, he was in cruise control the whole...

Rickey Leary was in my American Literature class in 2014. From my vantage point, he was the friendly, well-liked, hard-working kid who embraced his own playful nerdiness. In the picture below, for instance, he is being awarded a medal for answering the most extra credit questions correctly in any of my classes, a testament to how hard he worked and how carefully he read the material (Nate Abernethy is the photobomber). And that is why this post, which Rickey wrote several weeks ago, came as such a shock to me. To find out that Rickey was in his own private hell while he was goofing through his day and getting all those extra credit questions … well, it shook me up. To hear that he was severely depressed while a student in my class, and that I didn't notice, has made me think twice about my ability to read the signs. As teachers we are always told to look for signs. Every year we sit through long and necessary presentations from our student support staff about watching out for t...

Natalie Schmidt graduated from high school in 2015. I didn’t teach her, but I knew her from her reputation around campus as one of the golden children who did everything right. She earned A’s in all her classes, impressed her teachers and coaches with her endlessly positive attitude, and seemed to have a perpetual smile plastered on her face. I didn’t know Natalie well, but I have known many like her. And she is certainly not the first golden child who experienced some rough waters when she left high school. When the external validations disappear, when quite suddenly there isn’t a test to ace, an award to win, or a teacher to impress, it can leave a golden child drifting and uncertain. When Esther Greenwood, the surrogate character for Sylvia Plath in The Bell Jar, found herself in the same situation, she said she felt like “a racehorse without racetracks.” Because when you have placed much of your self-worth on the approval of others, there may be a moment coming w...

Uthara Vengrai graduated with the stellar class of 2016.  She was in two of my classes -- AP Language and Honors English 12.  One of the reasons I reached out to her to write something for the blog is because of the way she always modeled a kind of inner calmness.  The high school world can be a frenetic one, a nonstop carnival of fun and good times, but also pressure, stress, and worries.   It comes at you fast.  It can be like a vortex, and if you don’t throw a rope out and attach yourself to something, you can get sucked right down into the whirlpool of anxieties, sleep deprivation, and frantic busyness.  When she was in high school, Uthara took the most challenging classes and generally worked at a very high level.  Somehow, though, she stayed clear of that vortex.  Even at the busiest of times, she always modeled a kind of daily tranquillity.  “The room gets calmer when she enters,” another teacher told me, as if her very...

When I first met Henry Aceves in 2014, he was known as Sonia.  Perhaps it is worth noting from the outset that Sonia Aceves was a slightly different person than Henry Aceves.  Not just because she identified as female -- it was more than that.  Through September and October of my AP Language class, Sonia worked hard, but she did so in a kind of removed and detached manner.  She listened and occasionally contributed, but she always seemed self-conscious, her eyes shifting feverishly about the room, like she was worried someone was going to laugh at her or worse.  Now, in retrospect, it all makes sense.  If you are uncertain about something as central as your gender identity, how can you possibly make idle chit-chat and talk with confidence and ease about literature like your classmates?  If you are a girl who feels like a boy inside, how can you be expected to deal with the world in a straightforward, honest, candid manner?  Sonia’s solution w...

Katherine Dews graduated from high school in 2017.  During her senior year, as a student in my Honors English 12 class, she produced a wonderful capstone project that featured a series of personal essays about her struggles with identity as a mixed race girl.  She told stories about her first day in school (“Why is Katherine dark-colored even though her mommy is light-colored?” a young girl asked), the strangeness of playing with white Barbies, her obsession with getting her hair straightened during Middle School, and the cumulative weight of all of the racist jokes she let pass over the years. “The process of writing about myself was a journey in itself,” she said afterward. “I was essentially showing myself how far I have come, and this gave me more confidence.”  Katherine returns to some of these themes here in this post.  Katherine attends Occidental College in Los Angeles where she enjoys the California sunshine (see photo above). An active member of the ...

It has been 10 years since Hannah Ostrow was in my AP class, but I can still remember some of her essays.  Even as a junior in high school, she wrote with a mature style and knowing sophistication that is rare among young writers.  So it is not a surprise that she devoted this post, her first of many to come on the 650 blog :), to the deep value of reading and writing. It is often the case that when young people finish an intense educational experience -- high school, college, even graduate school -- they think to themselves, OK… now, NOW, I can read the books that I want to read!  I can remember sitting at the Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square a few days after finishing graduate school.  While watching the comings and goings of Cambridge, I made long lists of not just books, but important books, that I planned to read.  This is how Nick Carraway puts it at the beginning of The Great Gatsby .  “.. I had the high intention of reading many other books b...

Alex Deddeh is a good example of a person for whom high school and its immediate aftermath, a brief stint at a four-year college, didn’t work out the way she planned.  But as you will see in this post, she is also a good example of a person who persevered and grew stronger.  Though she describes high school as a “not-so-fun funhouse chock-full of confusion and frustration,” she faced up to her fears, found a kindred spirit in Holden Caulfield, reached out for help when she needed it, and came out the other side a strong, confident, and exceptionally self-aware person.  I can’t tell you how much admire her. Alex is in her final year at the University of San Diego, where she is earning a degree in English.  During her time as a Torero she has been a Resident Assistant, Intramural Supervisor, and Writing Center Consultant.  The former captain of the Parker Improv team, she still works at the National Comedy Theatre on India Street as a house staff/voice tec...

 R.B. Ganon took my American Literature course in 2011, which seems like a lifetime ago.  From my vantage point, he was of the most comfortable and easygoing kids in any of my classes.  Quick with a joke and popular with his peers, he seemed like the most happily extroverted young man I could imagine.  Look at him hangin’ with Ben Peters at the jumpy-fest known as Junior Day of Fun (see below). So when I approached him about writing something for the 650 Words blog, I was surprised that he wanted to write about loneliness and the high school experience.  For him, it was the first thing that came to mind.  It was a good reminder for me that everyone experiences some measure of loneliness, even the smiling kid who is clowning around in class all the time.  Maybe especially that kid -- as articulated beautifully by the band Wilco in the song “How to Fight Loneliness” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CAYFIpi89k).  That’s right:  smile a...