The more things change, the more they stay the same

Working from home during a global pandemic will have you learning new ways to adapt. Whether it’s picking up a new hobby, finishing a long-ago started project, or shifting how you commune with the people in your space – the learning curve has impacted us all. For me, these past ten months have had its highs and lows.  I have coped by purging non-essentials. Which means from the attic to the basement, I have found myself face-to-face with memories of my past, including relics like printed photos from the 80s, elementary school certificates and awards, 90s Rap, R&B and Classic Salsa CDs, and college essays and papers– moments since forgotten.  

Digging up my boxes from high school and college years, I now recall that I enrolled in college with a Biology major.  I thought my career would have me working with primates who assisted persons with disabilities. As I read my college entrance essays, however, I now know my professional path was destined to be exactly where I am; as an action advocate for communities disadvantaged by systems not created to see us succeed.

Excerpt from college admission essay: (1995)

One can say that I am striving to earn an education out of spite; to change the Puerto Rican Obituary by Pedro Pietri so that no longer will the Latino die:

“Always broke,

Always owing,

Never knowing that they are a beautiful people, 

Never knowing the geography of their complexion.”

Twenty years ago, I was focused on the same themes that fuel my work today.  Themes that the world around me coin under diversity, inclusion, and equity work.  My essays spoke about:

• The value my mother’s native language had on my experiences;

• The unfavorable statistics that place my odds of success on the losing end;

• The othering effect which dissipated opportunities for untapped, talented kids in my neighborhood;

• The miseducation of generations; and

• The will and optimism to supersede the status quo.

I was 18 then.  I did not see a career in education for myself at the time.  I reported life as it was for me.  Looking back, I now know this journey was already written. What I did not know then, was that the same themes would resurface for the same communities I work for with strikingly, dismaying similarities. The more things change, the more they stay the same. And yet, somehow you and I are exactly where we are meant to be.

Twenty years ago, where did you think you would be in 2020? 

How different does it look from what you imagined?