650 Words

And thus we begin the 650 teacher series. Teachers have a unique and interesting viewpoint on high school. While for many of us it is a distant memory, it also feels like we never left. I've forgotten a lot of the particulars of my high school experience, but I do have a foggy sense of not knowing much about who I was, what I was doing, or why I was doing it. There were kids in my friend group who were notably confident -- and now, looking back, I think they were probably just acting confident -- but I always carried around a quiet sense of self-doubt. I wore it close, like a wetsuit or long underwear, something that clung to me closely and privately but I hoped was invisible to the rest of the world. This is why high school has always fascinated me.  Everyone is confused.   I was confused.   Dr. Wilson -- who seems like the most self-aware person any of us can imagine -- even HE was confused. For this reason, the world of high school strikes me th...

Chris Newsome graduated from high school in 2016. A student in two of my classes, he was quiet but responsible and conscientious. I never got the impression that the books we were reading in class stirred him up, but he read them dutifully, earned good grades, and went off to college the way most everyone does. What I remember about Chris was how he came alive on the days he showed videos he had made. It was a curious thing for all of us to watch this quiet young man who sat in the back and kept to himself suddenly blow the roof off with his excitement and passion as he explained what he had created. In his capstone project, for instance, he made a video that compared books we had read with his favorite games. Chris’s gaming video went on for 30 minutes and I remember everyone in the class being stunned at how slick and professional the whole thing looked. But gaming is gaming and school is school, right? A lot of people my age see playing video games as the ultimate waste of tim...

In 2013 Alex Frachon graduated from high school, an experience he now describes as “like floating down a river in a rickety boat, putting band-aid after band-aid on the holes within the vessel.” The boat never sank, though, and Alex made it through the experience with his soul intact. Alex was a happy-go-lucky sort of guy in high school. On his daily list of “things to do,” homework was probably something like number 14, right behind watching the garbage truck and skateboarding aimlessly up and down Ampudia Street. But having him in class was like teaching with a resident comedian in the back of the room. He had a thousand funny voices and would drop one into a discussion at any moment to get a laugh.  He was the kind of comedian who was always working with you rather than against you, a distinction that not all students understand.  He cracked me up.  Still does. So it surprised me to hear that he regretted anything about his high school experience. As it turns out, ...

Tim Barry graduated from high school in 2011 as an undistinguished student. He was entirely comfortable with this lack of distinction. In fact, I always got the impression that he treated high school like a humorous reality TV series -- or maybe a four-year-long ridiculous improv show that ended with someone jumping out from behind the podium at graduation and saying “Spaghett”!  (To understand that joke, you have to watch this video that Tim used to mimic all the time when he was a junior in my American Literature class.) Tim was and is a likeable guy. He wasn’t particularly serious about academics, but we had some laughs together back in the day. When he spoke in class, he had a way of pretending to be very serious while barely restraining his laughter. Ask him to tell the story about the time I razzed him while he was just about to throw the shot put at Clairemont High. Good times! Spaghett! Tim’s story is a good reminder that the rigid structures of high school...

Emma Moore graduated in 2016. She was a stellar student in two of my classes -- AP Language and Honors English 12-- as well as a champion hiker in my interim class. The photograph below was taken after a long hike in the Laguna Mountains. Like so many students, Emma gave off the impression that everything was just great all of the time. Smiling and solicitous, she was one of our Superkids -- the ones who can stay up half the night doing homework, show up for school the next day with a giant Starbucks and anchor the class discussion with buzzing energy and passion, and then go post a respectable time in the cross country meet after school. And then get up early the next day and do it all again. But as is so often the case, the Superkid exterior was masking struggle and pain. Emma writes about that here, in a post that takes on the form of a "real" college essay -- how she would have used her 650 words if she had been telling the truth. If Emma was a little lost in high ...

Theresa Sgobba graduated from high school in 1997, which makes her the elder statesmen of this venerable group of contributors (so far). Unlike some of our younger writers, she has experienced quite a few traditional “life markers”: she graduated from college (Stanford, 2001); she went to law school (Yale, 2004); she pursued a career (13 years in criminal justice reform); she married (Stephen Shelley, 2013); she had a child (Sofia, 2016). But as you will see from this post, there is nothing traditional about Theresa. We hear the advice all the time. Follow your passion. Listen to your heart.  Seize the day.  I’ve certainly said these kinds of things to the young people who have come through my classes. But as you get older the advice can seem like it no longer applies. How do you listen to your heart when you have to pay a mortgage? How you seize the day when you’re feeling overworked and underappreciated in your job? How do you follow your bliss when it feels like your pa...

A member of the wonderful class of 2016, Alison Carey was in two of my classes, AP Language and Honors English 12.  Passionate, intuitive, and self-aware, she did great work in both courses, including a memorable Capstone Project that involved writing a dozen poem/songs all centered around Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar . After reading Alison’s post, it occurred to me how much time we spend setting goals for ourselves. We have our lists, our planners, our resolutions. Americans in particular it seems are deeply committed to the concept of self-help. We love the hustle. We love to feel ourselves getting better, checking boxes, working and working to close the gap between our Flawed Selves and our elusive Best Selves/ Alison’s post reminds us that sometimes you need to take a breath, tally things up, look in the mirror, and accept yourself for exactly what and who you are. While at certain times in your life it might make sense to strive for improvement, other times it f...