Learning – On Second Thought

Finals Redux

It’s that time of the semester again, Finals Week (It’s two weeks for me, this and next week). I thought I would revive this essay from two years ago. The emotions are the same: stress, excitement, anxiety. When this semester is over, I will have only two semesters to go until graduation in Spring 2024.

Education — Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

It’s finals week at California State University, Long Beach. Actually, my finals began last week, but the hard stuff is this week. I don’t know what it is about testing and writing final papers. I always get anxious, sometimes nervous beyond relief. Now, these are not time-pressured deadlines save for the deadline to submit. That doesn’t seem to matter. The problem is with the task itself.

I know that my semester grade is dependent on this. Sixteen weeks of studying, quizzes, a mid-term, writing other papers, class participation will mean very little if I flunk this final week. I’m sure I’ll still get a good grade of a “B,” but as you well know, such a grade is never good enough for me. At Long Beach City College, where I received my A.A. in English, only once did I garner a grade lower than an “A” sneak into my transcript. That was for Statistics. I can’t tell you how upset I was. That lone grade of “B” haunted me for weeks. That sound neurotic to you? And that’s the problem. One exam can really test your sense of self, patience, and measurement of how you are really doing in school.

Something isn’t right about that. Having served in the real world of careers, I don’t quite remember the last time someone asked me a statistics question or provide an analysis of Twelfth Night or spar with me on the true meaning behind Waiting for Godot. I mean, I wish they would. I’d be ready for them. Seems such a shame that you go through all the anxieties and gymnastics of studying and testing only to leave it behind once you leave school.

All those years in school, K-12 and College, and you can barely remember a fourth of it. What was the point? I mean, you know how much sleep I lost studying for a test only to discover that most of what I studied never appeared on the exam. What a waste of time is what I would say. And all this would be true if it wasn’t for the fact that I know this wasn’t just about memorizing facts. This semester at CSULB and my past semesters at LBCC were about my learning to think.

Wait, to think? Hell, I could have done that at home listening to some podcast with my eyes closed. And that would probably count too. Every time you watch television or a YouTube video or scan a website, you’re taking in information. If you’re conscious of what you’re doing, you’re learning to think.

I thought my years in jobs as a motorcycle messenger or bartender or waiter were just temp jobs until I scored the big career move. Actually, I learned so much about organizing, people relations, and how to make a mean drink (a great conversation starter even if I don’t drink anymore). I used to think that anything outside the formal setting of a school or a training course was just, oh I don’t know, just living, doing a job, making a living. The reality is I was learning to think through life. I’m not just talking about learning to survive in those cold, savage jungles of New York, Washington, D.C., or Los Angeles (Okay, that too). I was learning how to view the total picture, the complexity of reality, an event or a situation, the people I met along the way, make decisions based on facts, instincts, experience. Did I always get it right? Oh, hell no. But, even when I got it wrong in Statistics, I learned something other than I would never take that course ever again. I sharpened my analytical skills.

I could go on with a long list of skills that I acquired doing activities outside of school. But, my time at Long Beach City College and now in the waning days of my first semester of CSULB have given me an appreciation of the power of formal education. The professors, the textbooks, the lectures, the interaction with fellow students create an environment where you can lose yourself in intellectual enlightenment if you allow yourself. Does that mean every class I’ve taken is equal in the results? No, some are better than others. But, I decided a long time ago that I wasn’t going to waste any chance to learn to think.

I haven’t. As I wrote in a reflections letter that was part of the finals for an English class,

“You can sail through college and get that degree and not remember a damn thing you studied. Or you can take each day to allow yourself to be absorbed by what you learn.” If you choose the latter path, you will be changed forever. I have, and I am.
English 380- English Studies

I shared with him my daily mantra, “Eat life like you’re starving. You may feel full at the end of the day, but damn, it tasted good.” The class, like life, offered me a buffet of mind-altering intellectual dishes in sixteen weeks that left me very full. I can comfortably say that my brain and my spirit feel very satisfied.

And isn’t that the point? You walk away from a person, an event, a job, and if you feel like, damn, I’m wiser now than I was before that encounter, you can smile. All that knowledge will go into my memory banks and be available to use the next time I want to learn something new. I’m doing Finals Week like it’s one more opportunity to learn something new no matter how stressful it might be. Because some things in life are worth putting a little more effort into it.

Lifelong Learning

Well, one more semester under my belt. Spring 2022 is done. Yes, I’m anxiously awaiting my grades (I did get one A already. Only two more to go). But I must tell you, I realize more each semester that passes that I’ve been missing the whole point of why I’m going to college. Sure I want my degree, and of course, I would like some validation for my hard work. However, that’s not the point. Learning is.

I started my college journey in 2016 at the age of sixty-seven. That came after working a long line of jobs and careers since I was fifteen years old, from New York to Washington, D.C. to Hartford, Connecticut, back to Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles to Long Beach, California. I once counted thirty-six jobs during that time, from selling magazine subscriptions to television executive producer to mentoring young people. I couldn’t begin to quantify everything I’ve learned about people, life, and subjects, from spotting stains on clothing to how to produce a live television event with more than twenty-four cameras plus the Goodyear Blimp.

Yet, just when I thought I had learned it all, I discovered that there is no such thing. Learning is living every day you are alive. If you open your senses, then you are learning something new. Even when you are doing the same thing from one day to the next, you can learn something new if you are open to it.

Beginning at Long Beach City College and now at California State University, Long Beach, I have tackled everything from Political Philosophy to Statistics to Mythology to Writing Creative Nonfiction. Along the way, I’ve learned that I am capable of opening my mind to new ideas and how to challenge opinions that I thought were anchored in concrete and immovable. I see these things because I refuse to stop learning.

This past semester, I took three classes, English 404 (Creative Nonfiction), English 470 (American Ethnic Literature), and English 385 (The Short Story). Each class challenged me with reading and writing assignments. Every day, I read a short story, a novel, a poem, and a nonfiction essay. I wrote critiques and essays. I engaged with my classmates in often stimulating discussions about what we had read and written. I loved every second of it. There were new ideas, perspectives, and directions to learn and think.

For example, English 385, “Music is Freedom and Redemption in James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues.”

In 2020, New York City celebrated the centennial of the Harlem Renaissance. The Renaissance was a revival of Black culture and thought in music, literature, theater, and politics during the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century. On the centennial occasion, Baruch College of the City University of New York celebrated the roots of jazz and the blues in Harlem. Mo Beasley, a Harlem, New York-based poet and educator, observed, “If there were no music in Harlem, there would be no black folks in Harlem” (Bacchus and Banks). James Baldwin writes of this legacy of music and Harlem in his 1957 short story, “Sonny’s Blues.” Blues, jazz, and gospel are the soundtrack for the estranged lives of Sonny and his much older brother, the story’s unnamed narrator. The music is a metaphor for the lives of Harlem, where there is pain one moment and hopes the next. One can find the pain in a juke joint along 125th Street, where the music is “something black and bouncy" (Baldwin 40). Spiritual uplift can come from an old-fashioned revival of jangling tambourines, testifying, and gospel music, bringing hope to Harlem’s people. The alternating emotions of vivid jazz and wailing blues pounded out by a musician’s instrument fill the air. The music in their lives is crucial to unlocking Sonny and his brother’s anguished and conflicted souls so they can break free and find redemption, even if momentarily.

English 404 “1968 A Year of Living Violently”

In 1968, I was nineteen, living in the Bronx. I couldn't feel how deep was the water around me or know I would almost drown in it. My mind and life were mired in an ocean of depression and anxiety. The turmoil was lurking on the horizon. Youth were challenging the world order. War was everywhere, in faraway lands, on American streets, in our souls. The war in Vietnam continued to eat the young even as we protested across this country. The champions of a peaceful revolution were assassinated. Racist forces held their ground against the forward movement of American history. The old voices told us to believe that America was exceptional. Racism, sexism, income disparities, and class warfare were only aberrations. They called us communists, rabble-rousers, and traitors. According to them, we were the real danger to America. They sicced police violence down on us. Bodies and blood flowed like a flash flood across America’s urban landscape. I battled for survival inside the cyclone, where my life would be defined by two lies: a “normal” life during the day and a dope fiend at night.

English 470 “In the Time of the Butterflies: Heroes, Dictators, and the People Who Love Them”

In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez is a fictionalized account of the Dominican Republic’s four Mirabal sisters known as Las Mariposas- the Butterflies. Three of the four sisters would eventually be surveilled, jailed, and assassinated for their protests against the tyrannical reign of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, known simply as Trujillo (Alvarez). Alvarez's narrative strategy is to tell their story from many “different perspectives and narrated by a myriad of characters” (Puleo). Alvarez based the novel on actual people and events. Lurking in the background of the Mirabal story are the circumstances that propagated the long dictatorships like that of the man nicknamed El Jefe. Trujillo’s formula for survival included the use of the secret police who carried out his orders, a Catholic Church that looked the other way until it could not, and the upper classes of Dominicans who benefitted from the regime. Then, there was the conspiracy of everyday Dominicans who spied and informed on others, actively supporting the brutal dictatorship or falling silent at the disorder around them. Those critical elements in Alvarez's novel provide a roadmap to understanding both the brutality and the longevity of the real-world Trujillo regime. The story also serves as a warning for supporters of democratic institutions that they must be vigilant to prevent future dictatorships.

These essays resulted from deep thinking, extensive research, multiple drafts, and allowing my mind’s imagination to soar to places it’s never been before. No matter the grade I eventually get, I feel more confident at the end of every semester that I’ve given my best at that time. The point is that I learned something new so that next semester, I will hopefully give something new and the best of that new. Damn, I love learning.

Postscript: I expect to graduate with a BA in Creative Writing in May 2024. I will be seventy-five years old. Next year, I will be applying to an MFA program in Creative Nonfiction. I expect to be seventy-seven or seventy-eight when I complete my studies. Now, that’s lifelong learning.

Spring Finals Redux

It’s that time again. Spring finals week begin May 9. I thought it would be a valuable reminder to revisit last semester’s essay on the subject to mark the anxiety-filled event. (Edited for grammar and style).

It’s finals week at California State University, Long Beach. My finals began last week, but the hard stuff is this week. I don’t know what it is about testing and writing final papers, but I get anxious, sometimes beyond relief. Now, these are not time-pressured deadlines save for the deadline to submit. That doesn’t seem to matter. The problem is with the task itself.

I know my semester grade is dependent on this. Sixteen weeks of studying, quizzes, a mid-term, writing other papers, and class participation will mean very little if I flunk this final week. I’m confident that won’t happen, but as you well know, a grade less than an “A” is never good enough for me. Does that sound neurotic to you? Don’t answer that. At Long Beach City College, where I received my A.A. in English, only once did I grab a grade lower than an “A.” That was for Statistics. I can’t tell you how upset I was. That lone “B” haunted me for weeks. And that’s my problem. One exam can challenge your self-confidence, patience, and measurement of how you are doing in school.

Something isn’t right about that. I don’t remember the last time someone asked me a statistics question in the real world. They demanded an analysis of Twelfth Night or sparred with me on the true meaning behind Waiting for Godot. I mean, I wish they would. I’d be ready for them. It seems such a shame that you go through all the anxieties and gymnastics of studying and testing only to leave it behind once you leave school.

All those years in K-12 and College, I now can barely remember a fourth of it. What was the point? You know how much sleep I lost studying for a test only to discover that most of what I studied never appeared on the exam. What a waste of time is what I would want to say. And all this would be true if my education was only about memorizing facts. If I did learn anything, education was about learning to ask questions and seek answers. Think.

Wait, learning to think? I could have done that at home, listening to some podcast with my eyes closed. And that would probably count too. The truth is that every time you watch television or a YouTube video or scan a website, you’re taking in information. If you’re conscious of what you’re doing, you’re learning to think.

I thought my years in jobs as a motorcycle messenger, bartender, or waiter were just temp jobs until I scored the big career move. I learned so much about organizing, people relations, and how to make a mean drink (a great conversation starter even if I don’t drink anymore). I used to think that anything outside the formal setting of a school or a training course was, oh, I don’t know, just living, doing a job, making a living. The reality is that I was learning to think through life. I’m not just talking about learning to survive in those cold, savage jungles of New York, Washington, D.C., or Los Angeles (Okay, that too). I was learning how to view the total picture, the complexity of reality, an event or a situation, the people I met along the way, and make decisions based on facts, instincts, and experience. Did I always get it right? Oh, hell no. But, even when I got it wrong in Statistics, I learned something other than I would never take that course again. I sharpened my analytical skills.

I haven’t. As I wrote in a reflections letter that was part of the finals for an English class,

“You can sail through college and get that degree and not remember a damn thing you studied. Or you can take each day to allow yourself to be absorbed by what you learn.” If you choose the latter path, you will be changed forever. I have, and I am.
English 380- English Studies

I shared with the professor my daily mantra, “Eat life like you’re starving. You may feel full at the end of the day, but damn, it tasted good.” The class, like life, offered me a buffet of mind-altering intellectual dishes in sixteen weeks that left me very full. I can comfortably say that my brain and my spirit feel very satisfied.

And isn’t that the point? You walk away from a person, an event, a job, and if you feel like, damn, I’m wiser now than before that encounter, you can smile. All that knowledge will go into my memory banks and be available to use the next time I want to learn something new. I’m doing Finals Week like it’s one more opportunity to learn something new, no matter how stressful. It might be because some things in life are worth putting a little more effort into.

Finals

I haven’t. As I wrote in a reflections letter that was part of the finals for an English class,

“You can sail through college and get that degree and not remember a damn thing you studied. Or you can take each day to allow yourself to be absorbed by what you learn.” If you choose the latter path, you will be changed forever. I have, and I am.
English 380- English Studies

73

Well, it’s that time of the year again. December 8, 2021. The flat earth has faked its voyage around the sun again, and 365 days later, I’m still here. Another great year of doing my best to stay away from as many crazies as possible while hoping that I can just get through a day without hearing the name of you know who. Hint: it ain’t this President, Joe Biden. So it’s birthday time and an opportunity to assess the past year and wonder where I am in the grand scheme of things. Have I learned well enough and done enough good things that I deserve to celebrate this birthday with a smile on my face?

Look, I’m smiling.

This June, I graduated with an AA in English from Long Beach City College (LBCC) with honors. Let’s start with that. Yes, it took me five years, but I dug in my heels, pushed my body and mind through some rough physical patches along the way, and made it to the finish line. Not bad for a then seventy-two-year-old.

My poem, The Ax Handle, was published in the LBCC literary journal Saga.

I was accepted to California State University, Long Beach, where I am in the final two weeks of my first semester. The big difference for me is that I’m now taking three classes instead of two. I still count myself lucky every time I hear about students taking four classes while working part-time or even full-time jobs and taking care of a family. But, this is still no walk in the park for me. I’ve probably done more reading and writing in the past two semesters in college than I have in, oh I don’t know, thirty years? And I love it. I’ve written two original short stories this semester along with four academic essays, read about literary theories from Michel Foucault and Mikhail Bakhtin, watched the television drama, and read the text of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot for the first time. Holy shit, what took me so long? There was Olaudah Equiano, John Keats, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (I’ve seen the movie but never read the story), Virginia Woolf, and Chinua Achebe (a Nigerian writer), who blew my mind. They’re not kidding when they say you have a choice: sail through college and get that degree and not remember a damn thing you studied, or you can take each day to allow yourself to be absorbed by what you learn, and you will be changed forever. I like the latter.

Not satisfied with one artificial knee on my left leg, I decided to get a new knee on my right leg. There were no complications. I’m jumping around (maybe jumping is too strong a word) on two titanium knees now. How did I ever forget what it means to replace one’s knee? This is no walk in the park. As the physician assistant told me once when I complained about the pain, “Remember, we just tore your leg open, ripped out the old knee, and plugged in a metal knee while cutting nerves and moving shit around.” Okay, I’m paraphrasing now, but I got it. Yeah, they did that. Didn’t make the pain go away, but sure did sober me up and convinced me to take the damn pain pills that I’d been resisting out of fear of addiction and throw myself knees first into physical rehab. Five months later, I’m doing just fine.

Special thanks to my wife-partner, Sumire Gant, for leadership and planning. We’ve finally gotten around to some long overdue house remodeling. Funny how you take your home for granted sometimes. You’ve lived in it for twenty-three years, and you just get so used to things being what they are that you don’t realize how uncomfortable you are with specific spaces. Then, you come to the Aha moment that your home would be even better if only you took the time to fix or replace those spaces. Well, we’ve spent the nearly past two years slowly getting around to things that we’ve been putting off for a very long time, and it really feels good.

The most essential thing that has happened to me since my last birthday has been my continued growth as a human being, a husband, a father, and a brother. While I’ve had to fight hard to battle the Pandemic Blues, I continue to work on my nearly thirty-seven-year-old relationship with my wife-partner, Sumire Gant. We just celebrated our thirty-fourth anniversary recently, and on January 1, 2022, we’ll commemorate thirty-seven years of living together. Now, there’s a woman with patience.

I’m consistently strengthening my relationship with my oldest son, Antonio, the father of the beautiful granddaughter, Anabella, and my youngest, Daichi Gant-Ruiz. I’m so proud of both of them.

Then, there’s my family in New York, with whom I continue to build bridges. As the oldest, I just found it easy to disentangle myself during the sixties from family. Yes, I know I always used the excuse, “It was the sixties, man!” but I took it to an extreme through the next fifty years. I moved around a lot to other cities and coasts and acted as if they and my parents were someone else’s family. Yeah, don’t do that. It’s not a good thing.

The side benefit of building bridges is I’m also growing connected with the Dominican half of me, my mother’s side. I’m reading Junot Diaz’s book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, all about the Dominican Republic and Dominicans. Damn, I thought Puerto Rico was fascinating. They don’t have anything on the DR and their history of spectacular dictatorships and United States intervention. There are Dominican cousins (we seem to have a million of them) in New York who have been busy charting the family’s genealogy for some time now. I’ve seen pictures of grandmothers going back to the nineteenth century. Now, that’s cool.

As I begin the next trek around the sun rushing toward 74, let me just confirm what friends of mine who are older than me have been saying for years, “Hold on, the best rides are just ahead.”

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