somafrazier

As a kid I’d watch my mom grading papers late into the night – exhausted, she squinted at her work in a soft circle of lamplight; stood to stretch, now and again. As she worked incessantly I witnessed summers “off” transformed into summers on: the beach forgotten in the excitement of designing or retooling a course, ice cream left to melt when a colleague phoned with an urgent request, those two sultry months as deadline-packed as all the rest. “Damn,” I thought. “I’ma be a dancer.”

But I’m uncoordinated. And clunky. With knee problems. Moreover, I never forgot the satisfied smiles that lit Mom’s face when her hard work rendered results: when a struggling student uttered a phrase in Mandarin with a native speaker’s tones, or something she was proud of got published.

Bam. Suddenly it seems I’m a professor too. And when stuff like this brief CBS Local piece is published, I find myself floored – by life’s unpredictability and by its inevitability.

Humbled + honored to rep Cogswell Polytechnical College​, adding my 2 cents to the dialogue around education, here: http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/06/22/professor-says-new-graduates-should-balance-work-with-hands-on-activities