My first summer was long, and interesting. It wasn’t my first summer for that had happened over 18 years ago and I was in a womb at the time. This was the first summer I spent without the company of my parents of the company of Germans.
When I was 9 my parents sent me to Germany for the summer. I was on my own. For an intensive language course. Now when I say they sent me I’m overstepping the poetic license often afforded to writers (for that is what I choose to call myself at times like these). I asked to go – sort of. 3 months earlier I’d had an earnest conversation with my parents about my desire to learn to speak German.
You could say it’s my parent’s fault as they intiitated me in the world of languages when at the age of four they enrolled me in Japanese classes. That stopped about 8 months ago and the only traces remaining of that are the numbers and a few awkward phrases and terribly butchered spoken and written traces of what could have been.
Back to the Germany bit-
I was going to a small town outside of Munchen called Berchtesgarten (sp?). The first week though I would be touring with a group of 12-14 year old boarding students from Amsterdan in Switzerland. I was in Switzerland, my age was nine and had pocketfuls of cash. I bought the most expensive Swatch watch I could. I bought the biggest, baddest Swiss Army money could buy. On day 4 I called my parents asking for money for, you know, food and stuff.
I wish I could say I reasoned out the expense as an investment, a quality mausoleum that would allow me not to remember time but to forget it (a la Faulkner). The turth is I thought the watch was cool and though my, at the time, rather delicate wrists could not muscle up to the size of the strap, I wore it proudly. And I carried the Swiss army knife confident that the plastic toothpick would one day save me from either the Zombie apocalypse or a lodge piece of meat between the molars.
I repeated the experience 4 more times travelling again to Munchen, then Frankfurt and twice to Berlin. Needless to say personal finance was a field explored considerably and one that was mastered by trial and a considerable amount of error. On my fifth trip I came back with money.
But I digress only as a necessary setup for the first freshman summer. I was taking classes but I’d come to realize that summer classes give the student the distinct impression of being useless, and easy, and puny compared to the semester long courses. Sure, you were trapped in classrooms for a longer period of time and on more repeated occasions – but the professors took the opportunity to experiment or teach courses they truly loved without the academic year mad rush to publish. There was also the thick Philadelphia summer air that required linen clothing from top to bottom and and air-conditioned sunshine to be survived.
People joked with me asking me if I was really from Mexico and how was it that I could not stand the heat. Silly kids. I can handle heat better than most anyone – though I’ll be sweating profusely throughout the “handling” process – but the kind of heat that most of the northeastern cities observe was something new and unexpected for me. It was wet, damp, moist and dense. I hate swimming in soup.
Ient through the motions with the classes and on most night me and the guys living in the fraternity house that summer wouldorder large buffalo chicken pizzas from across campus – Ed’s. It felt like a travesty to order from an eatery that wasn’t on Penn’s campus.
Drexel.
Students and graduates in Mexico fail to build a sense of community or loyalty to their institutions. In fact the term or expression ‘alma mater’ hasn’t really made it into mainstream language in Mexico even though our language, it would seem, would be more keen to adapt it given our romantic tendencies. Whether that’s the fault of the institutions, the economy or the students is something that academics like Lujambio Alonso probably wonder about and consider at these elevated educational summits that he so earnestly advertises on Twitter.
I think it’s a combination of the three stakeholders. Universities in Mexico have yet to truly embrace the idea of higher education for the sake of its contribution potential to the society around them, the creation of an educated set of academics that can dedicate their life’s to professorships and a sustainable outlet for research and its application. On the side of the students – a stakeholder group to which I add the parents who have the task of “raising their kids” there is a desperate under appreciation for education, a terrifying sense that doing just enough is good enough and an unfortunate elitism inherent in social class.
The wealthy in Mexico often don’t care about education because if they are women, they are still expected to obtain MRS degrees. And yes, I’m talking 2011. If they are men they expect to inherit whatever the family business or scam is depending on how old the money is. If they are on the extreme other side of the issue the truth is that even public education (which is sometimes, still, surprisingly the best , i.e. www.udeg.mx) is expensive and often requires upper level connection to gain access to. And even then the universities failure to breach the income gap, foster intercollegiate unity and the lack of a figure or form to rally around.
Here I learned, depending on your school and region you either rallied around whatever sport did the best, the exclusivity of your school or the reputation you would work hard to uphold.
I was working on the party Ivy. It was simple, nightly we would either host parties or go through the streets attempting to set up BYOs, owning up to huge bar tabs (that to this day I’m grateful we would split up 7 or 8 ways) or simply being raucous and launching balloons from rooftops sometimes only narrowly missing windows that we would have been sad to see go.
I’d never truly owned a bar because I’d never experienced the sometimes desolate ghost town feel of a university in the summer. But 4 seniors and 3 freshmen rolled into a legendary place called the Blarney Stone and ignored the two strangers in there and focused on the bar tenders and the jukebox. Between pints of Blue Moon and toasts to life, the year 1850 and the new and old we sang Frank’s entire discography. That night we stumbled back with our arms linked together and we watched as Shia tried to look tough and good. A feat made easier by the fact that none of the extras were over 5’10.
We had a 4th of July party. We watched the fireworks from a roof. I ate hot dogs and sat on a picnic blanket at night with sparklers. Everything I’d seen or read about before was actually true.
The next day my dad arrived to stay with me for a couple of days.
The main hall was covered in everything ungodly. Beer bottles and cans lined the floor along with bits and pieces of cake and watermelon. Both of which had been an essential part of the food fight. Shishas and other things – vases if you will – were everywhere, some of them still standing in a kind of solemn defiance while others had fallen like soldiers in a battle field. There was toilet paper on the chandeliers and about 400 solo cups. The smell was a combination of rotting fruit, stale beer and a bit of vomit that I was sure was hiding in the chimney.
My dad took a second to take it all in. 30 seconds. 1 minutes. He turned, looked at me and asked where my room was. We walked up to the third floor and once he was settled in my room he said:
“I saw some Smirnoff vodka downstairs”
“Um…. Yes?”
“Well.”
My dad is prone to paused speech, a second habit from being a public figure most of his life.
“Can I have some?”
I’d never been so glad that Barney taught me that sharing was caring.
A week or two later I started my summer job. Officially I was known as a Residential Teaching Advisor for the Program of Baby Geniuses – a summer program sponsored by the university for extremely capable rising Senior in High School. Extra-officially I was joining a three week paid vacation in Philadelphia were my main requirements would be to fend off flirtatious advances from a coworker (another student), get kids to wake up early and make sure that these extremely intelligent human beings did not perish for lack of common sense and basic good judgment.
Let me explain. One of the children – as I will call them from my then august 18 year old high horse – came running into the office claiming his refrigerator was not working. He was panting, for some reason.
Jack – “It just wont work Diego!”
I looked inside to make sure the switch was turn to on, felt around the ice box to check for signs of life.
Me – “What happened when you plugged it in Jack?”
Jack – “Plugged it in?”
This is the same kid that had probably scored a 2400 on his SAT about a month ago.
Every morning we walked the students from the residence halls to the lecture halls. And then back. And then to the dining halls. And then to the buses for whatever afternoon activity we’d planned for them. On the 4th day we lost a kid on the morning walk. We found him two hours later sitting on a park bench 6 blocks in the opposite direction. His reason? “I think I took a wrong turn somewhere”.
I wrapped up that job when a fraternity brother scored free tickets to the killers and I took most of my coworkers out to Camden that night for a last big bang.
And so my summer ended. Only a week or two shy of sophomore year – I thought this was when things would get interesting.
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