Who am I?

I am a first generation American of parents from Trinidad & Tobago. I lived in NYC practically my entire life but I was born in Maryland. My mother was a school teac her for nearly 25 years in the NYC Department of Education. Although I never really thought that I was exceptionally bright or anything, I was fortunate because I grew up in a household that was rich in books. My mom nurtured my love for books. I remember as a young kid going to the grocery store with my mom and running to the book aisle and selecting books that I wanted my mom to buy for me.  I believe that it was this intense love of books, and the worlds that existed in them that made me who I am today.

When I was in high school I was an average student. I still possessed my love of books, but I was aimless for a good part of that time. I was not extremely athletic, but I was a very tall boy for my age. I made friends fairly easily and I think that this is what got me through the boredom of teenage life. When I was 17 and in the eleventh grade, I was doing dismally in school, specifically in physics and pre-calculus.  My mom attended a parent teacher conference with me. At 17, I thought I was quit clever and was able to prevent my mom from seeing my report card for a couple of quarters. However, because she was a school teacher, to try to keep parent teachers conferences from her was like trying to keep the tide from the shore. Eventually it all comes crashing in.  It was my computer science teacher, Sheldon Pasquale, who bore the same name as me, who told my mom that I was quite good at being social, but I held no true talent for computer science, which is something that I figured out my first semester in the major. Later that year, my guidance counselor suggested that I go to a community college.  That guidance counselor stirred something deep inside me that I wouldn't truly understand until a few years later.

  Two things happened to me that changed my life.  The first was the statement from my guidance counselor. While I do believe that she was correct that I was underachieving at my high school, I disagreed with her assessment of where I should attend college.  I understood her as saying that I couldn't attend a four year college. The worst thing you can ever do is tell me I can't do something.  While I was an underachiever, I believe that it was because I just didn't know enough about what I wanted to do in the world and had little guidance on how to truly find myself.  I knew that the world held something for me, but I just hadn't found it yet. But her statements to me started a fire that I could never put out from that point: to find what was right for me in the worked on my own terns. The second thing that happened was that I took my first sociology course and with that my world changed.  My professor told stories of a world that I didn't quite understand but I wanted to know. It was stories of a world that I lived in and saw so many things that were contradictory to my experiences. When I was a freshman in college, so many things were happening in the world.  There was the Rodney King beating, the L.A. riots and the first Iraq War, OJ Simpson happened shortly afterwards.  However I was able to understand all of the things that were happening to and around me through sociology.

I think it’s interesting that I became a professor at a community college years later.  I am so grateful to teach here among students who probably grew up like I did in New York.  I have witnessed so many talented, special students since starting at this college three years ago and it is a privilege to teach here.  If it hadn’t been for that guidance counselor, I would probably be somewhere else.  She helped me to find what I loved! I want you to remember that they’ll always be someone around to tell you what you can’t do, you just have to tell yourself that you can!

 I hope that sociology will do the same for you.  Happy blogging this semester and let’s talk again.  If you have questions or comments, blog it out!