Category Archives: Academia

Student Follies

01 Thursday Apr 2010

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I’ve been chomping to talk about some of the more inane and insane actions of some of my students over the years. Why? I’ve found that the boundaries between professor and student have broken down quite a bit over the years. So much so that students tend to tell me things that would’ve earned me an F at the University of Pittsburgh as an undergraduate twenty-two years ago. It amazes me that common sense — or at least, some sense of etiquette — doesn’t kick in for these folks in their dealings with me and other instructors. It’s as if we’re merely tutors or academic mercenaries, subject to their feelings and whims, as if we’re only in the classroom to be there for them when they’ve screwed up. So, for those of you who are within a few years of embarking on your higher education journey — or are hopeful parents who expect their kids to attend college in the next decade or so — here are ten examples of what I’m calling “Student Follies.”

1. “I’m paying for this course, so…”: This one drives me nuts. It’s not like these students are writing me checks to pay for a course. The thing I say to them is that until my paycheck has their signature on it, I’m going to teach as a representative of the university, not as an agent for a student.

2. “Can you give me extra credit?”: What? Is this high school? Are you kiddin’ me?!? Whenever I get this question, I have to make sure not to laugh. If it were just college freshmen or high school students asking this question, I’d understand. But I often get upperclassmen or older adults who should know better asking about extra credit to increase their grade. Unlike high school, college is an endeavor that’s about a balance between providing every student an opportunity to excel and providing relative fairness and equality in those opportunities. I often explain that offering extra credit to an individual student is unfair to the students who busted their tails in getting their papers or other assignments done on time. They say they understand, but the fact that they asked in the first place says to me that they might not.

3. “Can I redo my paper?”: This question is an extension of number 2. Why would I give any student an extra bite at an apple that every other student got to bite only one time? I don’t like it when students don’t do well on something I know that with the right amount of training and effort, they could’ve earned a better grade. But my advice will remain to look at my comments and use them as strong advice for their next paper or assignment.

4. “I haven’t been to class because…” or “I have to miss class because…”: Every semester I’ve taught, whether high school students, undergrads or grad students, at an elite university, community college or other institution, I’ve had students miss as many as all of their classes for an entire semester. My first year as a TA at the University of Pittsburgh, I had a student-athlete (played on the tennis team) in his senior year who missed the semester because of an injury. What? Was this a brain injury? Of course not! After attempting to cheat on his makeup final, he failed my course, unsurprisingly.

I’m a flexible professor, and certainly understand when stuff comes up for students, more and more whom have jobs, spouses, families, and serious issues to deal with. So communicating with me like an adult is encouraged. But, at the same time, some students don’t understand the TMI rule. I don’t need to know that you might miss class to watch the NCAA Championship Game Monday night if West Virginia beats Duke on Saturday. Plus, I’m a Pitt fan anyway.

5. “I don’t like the grade you gave me…”: If a student really feels that they should talk to me about their grade, then they should. After class, before class, during a break, with an appointment to meet. Not while I’m giving instruction or explaining the pitfalls that most students fall into in writing papers. I generally hand papers with grades and comments to students at the end of class to avoid them creating an awkward moment. But the students I’ve been working with of late seem to think that their tuition payment gives them the right to object to a grade as soon as they see something they don’t like. The last thing I would’ve thought of doing as an undergrad was to object in front of other students to a grade or grading process. After all, it’s the professor, not the student, who determines grades for courses.

6. Complaining about things that I cannot do anything about: Complementary to number 5, it’s this sense that somehow I’m supposed to know that the LCD projector isn’t working properly, or that a student forgot her glasses for class one day. Or, for that matter, that a student has dyslexia or some other learning or physical disability, or that I should be more patient with another student because she works two jobs. Or that my course schedule, planned out months ahead of time, posted and handed to you the first day of the semester, is now an inconvenience for you because your job has scheduled you for a week-long conference out-of-town. Although I’m flexible, I’m also not going to rearrange my schedule or the schedule set for twenty, thirty or forty students because your life has just become more intense. How about, “Dr. Collins, can I get an extension?,” with a reasonable reason, and without complaining about being an adult?

7. “I’m entitled to my opinion…”: Really? Yes, in a free democratic society, you are entitled to your opinion. But in a college course, your opinion needs to be an informed one. With evidence from relevant and quality sources, based on reasonable analysis, with the ability to discern the difference between bullcrap and actual facts and acceptable interpretations. Unfortunately, I’ve had far too many students who’ve only been interested in expressing their opinions on life in the classroom and in their paper assignments, who think that every sentence should start with “In my opinion,” or “I believe…,” or “I feel…,” or “I think…” College papers aren’t expository essays, or, as we say more often these days, opinion-editorial pieces.

As a student, you shouldn’t think that it’s okay to write that American Indians were decimated by diseases after contact with Europeans “because they practiced a heathen religion.” Or that Whites prolonged slavery in America because “they were under the influence of satan.” Without any evidence to add to this, statements like these merely amount to bigotry. College is about exposure to new ideas and ways of thinking about the world. Giving answers to questions only in the form of opinions demonstrates that these students would prefer not to learn anything at all.

8. Bringing a full meal to eat during class: What? Do students actually think that it’s good form to bring a full three-course dinner to class? Apparently, the answer to this is yes. I know that people need to eat, pee, and deal with family issues when they’re in an evening course. But that doesn’t mean that you should interrupt a lecture, discussion or film with Triple Delight or a Big Mac and french fries. Cell phones should be on vibrate if a student can’t turn their phone off. Slamming the door to the front of the classroom after entering shows little respect for the professor or for the other students. This isn’t even something specific to being in college. I mean, would anyone pull this crap in a meeting with their boss?

9. “Your lectures are incomprehensible…”: Oh well. I guess that I should turn the class over to the students to run, since I’m obviously a teaching hack. I’m not naive enough to think that everything I say is crystal-clear or that everyone understands what’s being taught. But I also know that most of the students who complain have one or two issues. One, they haven’t been doing their readings or other preparation work for class, but somehow expect my lectures to make up for their laziness. Two, they expect me to give them direct answers to questions that require an understanding of interpretation and nuance. Some of my students have expressed their frustrations with this in ways that would’ve gotten me kicked out of my classes as an undergrad at Pitt.

10. Let’s play “Stump the Professor”: Too many students believe that showing the professor that they know historical trivia is necessary for their earning of an A. Knowing facts is helpful, but thinking through those facts takes much more than telling me that five people — and not three — died in the Boston Massacre in 1770. Great to know, but not really the point. Students don’t get to move on to Double Jeopardy if somehow I miss a fact or get a date incorrect by nine years. Correcting these things are fine, but not if a student does it with the idea that this proves that I as their professor somehow didn’t know what I was doing. This one is more annoying than many of the others, mostly because the students involved have an agenda, usually along the lines of proving how much smarter they think they are when comparing themselves to me.

So there it is. There are more, many, many more follies and stories I could tell. But, it comes down to respecting the position a professor holds, even if you don’t like the person. And learning as much as your can when in a course, rather than cutting corners to a higher grade.

Trip to the ‘Burgh

26 Wednesday Aug 2009

Posted by in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Jimme, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, New York City, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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My years as a full-fledged adult now number twenty-two. On this day and date, I left 616, Humanities, MVHS, Mount Vernon public schools, Mount Vernon and NYC behind for the first time. Even though I’d call New York City and Grand Central Station “the third armpit of hell” for the next seven years, I had plenty of times during my undergraduate days in which I missed the sights and smells of New York, the constant buzz. Not to mention quality deli meats, good pizza, Clover Donuts, the noise of Subway cars and Metro-North trains. But from the moment I started getting ready, truly ready to go, I had already left these things behind.

It was the last Wednesday in August when I took my five suitcases, Army bag, and two boxes by cab from 616 to 241st. But not before a long and tearful good-bye with my mother, Eri, Sarai, and Maurice. Yiscoc didn’t wake up to say good-bye until I was practically out the door. My stepfather insisted on giving me an extra fifty dollars for my college journey. I thought for a second about turning it down, and decided against it. “This was the least he owed me,” I thought. I felt bad about leaving, especially for Eri, who was just a little more than three years old. Darren and I took my stuff downstairs to the Reliable Taxi cab at five in the morning, got to the Subway stop and met Jimme there. We quietly rode the train to Penn Station on West 34th, where I’d catch the 7:50 am Amtrak for Pittsburgh. Once it was time to catch the train, Darren and Jimme helped with getting all of my stuff on the train, most of which I half-realized I probably wouldn’t need. We hugged, and Jimme actually teared up. This was the second time in a row I’d seen him sober, and he seemed happy for me.

The train ride to Pittsburgh was much longer than I expected. My assumption was that since Philly and Pittsburgh were in the same state that the ride wouldn’t last more than a couple of hours. What I didn’t know was that once we pulled into the City of Brotherly Love that the engineers would have to uncouple the electric engine and connect a diesel one. What I didn’t know was that the trip across the state of Pennsylvania was a long and windy one, with hills and mountains, small towns and tunnels. What I didn’t know was that there would be a boring recording describing the construction of track through the Allegheny Mountains which led to the creation of Horseshoe Lake. I took two naps, listened to five tapes, and with all of that, still had an hour and a half to spare. I ended up talking with a young Catholic priest during that time about the nuances of Christian faith and how Christians often misapply their faith in secular situations.

We pulled in about thirty minutes late, just before 5 pm. I immediately found a phone book and called for a Yellow Cab. I waited, and waited, and waited, all while about six cabs came up and picked up other passengers from my train. I looked at the downtown skyline and thought, “It doesn’t look like a hick town so far.” Yet the cab drivers sure acted like it was. They refused to make eye contact with me, much less pick me up. After an hour, I called Yellow Cab again, this time threatening them with a lawsuit. “If I don’t see a cab real soon, I’m contacting the NAACP and filing a discrimination lawsuit!,” I yelled to the dispatcher over the phone. Within three minutes I got my taxi. I was already beginning to think that Pittsburgh wasn’t my best choice for pursuing higher education.

My first drive through the heart of Pittsburgh reminded me of what people had been saying for years about New York and how great it was. Once we passed through downtown, which took less time than driving through Mount Vernon, we went through these decidedly working-class neighborhoods and Black communities that looked at least they belonged in South Side Mount Vernon. Then we reached the Oakland section of the ’Burgh. School buildings, college dorms that looked like silos, shops and restaurants abounded. Just before we turned left off of Forbes Avenue, I saw it, the Cathedral of Learning, for the first time. I was starting to feel better about my decision.

The driver turned left again, off Atwood and onto Fifth Avenue, then a right onto Lothrop, where, of course, Lothrop Hall was. It was an eleven-story dirty uranium-brown building, where years of coke soot had built up. There were few students or staff around. I went through security, using my high school ID for the last time, and the guard gave me a temporary dorm pass that I could use until I got my Pitt ID. My dorm room was on the third floor. It overlooked a drab and empty yet clean courtyard. I was lucky, since there was a good chance I might’ve ended up with a roommate. The dorm rooms at Lothrop went to one student apiece. I was so exhausted from all of the emotions and stresses of the day. I grabbed some junk food from the vending machine in the lobby, called my mother to tell her I was fine, somehow found the Mets game on my portable radio, and fell asleep in my twin bed.

Despite all that had happened at 616, in Humanities, MVHS and in Mount Vernon, I was homesick the last third of the semester. Not homesick because I missed having my ex-stepfather say, “take that base out of ya voice before I cave ya chest in.” Not homesick because I missed spending my Friday evenings and Saturdays tracking down Jimme at some dive in the Bronx or in Manhattan. I think that I was homesick because I was still reeling from crush #2, which made me realize that I never really had a home in the first place.

It took me a bit longer — about a year or so — to realize that despite the ‘Burgh’s lack of almost anything I’d normally describe as city or city-suburban life, I could still make the place my home. At the very least, the University of Pittsburgh was relatively more diverse, urban, and exciting than compared to the rest of the area. That was the reason I was there, after all. Still, I gave myself the room necessary to criticize the university and the city when I saw fit. But I also took time to look around, to see that whatever else was or wasn’t going on, I was in charge of my life now, and safe from the slights, hurts and abuses of my past.

On Catherine Lacey

22 Wednesday Apr 2009

Posted by in 1, Academia, Carnegie Mellon University, culture, Eclectic, Pittsburgh, Politics, Work, Youth

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Me with Catherine Lacey at the Spencer Foundation, June 25, 2002. (Angelia N. Levy).

Me with Catherine Lacey at the Spencer Foundation, June 25, 2002. (Angelia N. Levy).

This month marks fourteen years since my plans for earning my doctorate were all but assured by a Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship. It was a one-year fellowship, only $15,000, but it meant that I didn’t have to teach for a year, that I didn’t have to do grunt work for my advisor Joe Trotter, and that I wasn’t beholden to the history department at Carnegie Mellon for much of anything. It was a great triumph in my little world of graduate school. But of all the things that resulted from that award, one thing that I didn’t count on was another mentor and friend. Without a doubt, Catherine Lacey has had the longest lasting impact on my career and on my thinking, in and out of academia.

Catherine was the Senior Program Officer and Director of the Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship Program when I applied for it in the fall of ’94. She had taken over the program in ’93, with the apparent charge of making the program more inclusive and more dynamic for its participants. I’m not sure what the foundation’s dissertation fellowship program was like before. All I know is that Catherine’s seven-year-long tenure running it was one in which she practiced compassion, humility, optimism, and quiet leadership. She never sounded like an academician in directing the work, although she was a bit philosophical at times. She never sounded like a bureaucrat or a senior foundation officer who practiced the power of “No,” even though that was certainly a major part of her job. Almost from my first conversation with Catherine, I realized that she was different from anyone I’d met with an academic background or in the foundation world.

Her background was as a Catholic nun who at one point was a Catholic school teacher, at least through the late ’70s, if I remember correctly. At some point she decided to go back to school, to eventually earn a doctorate in education from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. Even though she was no longer a practicing nun (whatever I mean by that, I’m not entirely sure), I’m sure that this training and philosophical approach to life and work helped her a lot in her position at the Spencer Foundation. Maybe it was also the fact that she grew up in the Midwest, North or South Dakota I believe. Whatever the case, I think that this combination of experiences made her a more flexible and generous person than most of the foundation program officers and academic bureaucrats I’d met before and have come to know since.

The first time I ever heard from Catherine was right after a two-month research stay in Washington, DC and visit home in Mount Vernon, New York. I’d just come off of weeks in the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the Moorland-Spingarn Research collection at Howard University, the Sumner School Archives for DC Public Schools, and several other places doing research on my dissertation topic, multiculturalism in philosophy and practiced among Black Washingtonians. It was the end of March ’95, and it had been five months since I’d submitted my application packet for the Spencer fellowship. When I went to my Carnegie Mellon mailbox in the history department, there it was. A standard #10 envelope with only a one-page letter inside, which I knew because of the envelope’s thinness. I knew it was a rejection letter. Except that it wasn’t, at least not entirely. It had a handwritten note at the bottom of it from Catherine, asking me to give her a call as soon as I received the note.

So I did. Catherine did most of the talking, asking me about my research stay in DC, about my definition of multiculturalism and how it had or hadn’t changed because of my research. Then she talked to me about the selection committee. Apparently out of eight committee members, six voted in favor of awarding me the fellowship, one against, and with one in absentia. The sticking point was how I defined multiculturalism in my research proposal, putting me on the fence between award and no award. Although I would learn later that there were some academic and cultural politics involved in the two non-Yes votes, at the time Catherine told me that she would do everything she could to see if she could still fund my work. “I’m not making any promises,” she said before we got off the phone.

I didn’t know what to make of the call, other than the fact that Catherine cared about funding my work. That it wasn’t everyday that someone with her responsibilities called a student who had technically been rejected was also something I took away from that call. Two weeks passed. On Friday, April 14 of ’95, I got a call at home, right after 9:30 am. I assumed it was my mother or one of my friends. I hadn’t even taken the time to spit and rinse my toothpaste when I answered the phone. After the pleasantries, Catherine excitedly blurted out the good news. And I swallowed my toothpaste in response before asking how and saying thanks.

It turned out that Catherine thought that in addition to the 29 awards that were granted fellowships by the committee, that there were four others (including me) who should also receive the fellowship. Catherine had spent the previous two weeks asking the foundation for additional monies for the other four of us, and found that at least two of the original 29 awardees had accepted other fellowships. As a result, she could then give out four additional fellowships as part of her discretion as the director of the program. I was happy, to say the least about the award. But I was even happier that someone would fight for me and others the way Catherine did.

As a Spencer fellow, I learned a lot from my “fellow Fellows,” as I constantly called our group. That I wasn’t the only one whose advisor was acting as a roadblock toward our degree and career aspirations. That our colleagues on our campuses stared us all down with daggers in their eyes after learning about our awards. That hours upon hours of lonely research and intense writing and editing didn’t make any of our significant others or spouses particularly happy. Still, I learned as much from Catherine as I did from my fellow Fellows. About balance between life and work. About the realization that academia wasn’t our only career option, even as much as we thought it was at the time. That it was all right to feel ambivalent about pursuing an academic career.

This last one was of great importance to me, because my worries about becoming a publish-or-perish professor had always been there. I wanted to do something useful with my degree and life, something to benefit others, something that would allow me to help people who grew up like me, poor, possibly abused, and with the world thinking that I’d sooner go to jail than graduate high school. The one thing that Catherine’s work revealed to me was that it was possible to have a job and career that you could fall in love with, that helps others, and that enabled you to prosper financial. Her job allowed her to do all three, and very well at that.

It was that realization that enabled me to stumble my way into the nonprofit world, doing work on everything from community computer labs and civic education to a social justice fellowship program and education reform work on college access and success. Even after my fellowship ended in June ’96, I kept in contact with Catherine, attended Spencer gatherings and asked for advice. I even took my wife with me on a business trip to Chicago once to, among other things, have her meet Catherine at the Spencer offices in the John Hancock Building. I haven’t had quite the same luck of finding work that is as fulfilling as Catherine’s work was with Spencer. But I haven’t given up trying, and hope that what I have done and am doing does actually help others.

I haven’t talked to Catherine since the end of ’04. Not for lack of trying, though. Catherine decided after two years as a high-level administrator at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education that it was time for her to retire, to move back to the Dakotas, to live in seclusion, I guess. She didn’t particularly like Philly, or the grinding work that is almost pure administration. She missed Spencer, Chicago, and all of the people that she had met over the years. I think that the Bush years and 9/11 depressed her greatly

I miss Catherine. I miss asking her advice on everything from my job to whether I should turn Boy At The Window into a fiction novel instead of keeping it a memoir with narrative nonfiction elements (I know, that’s redundant) or even continue to pursue finding an agent. I miss sending her pictures of Noah or talking to her about her days at Spencer. Most of all, I miss telling her how much her friendship and unofficial mentoring have meant to me over the years. To Catherine, and really, all of my friends, many, many thanks.

We Are Family

04 Saturday Apr 2009

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Skyline of downtown Houston from Sabine Park, Houston, Texas, July 15, 2010. (Jujutacular via Wikipedia). Permission granted via GNU Free Documentation License.

This weekend marks fifteen years since visited my extended family on my mother’s side for the first time. It was Final Four weekend ’94 when I hopped on a Continental Airlines flight from Pittsburgh to Houston. To think that until April 2 ’94, I hadn’t been farther west than Atlanta (believe it or not, Atlanta is technically farther west than Pittsburgh) or been in any other time zone seems far-fetched now that I’ve crisscrossed this country enough times to earn hundreds of thousands of frequent flyer miles. To think that for years I never felt I had a family to talk about at all or that what I did have wasn’t worth talking about. That all changed that weekend.

I was really on my way to New Orleans for the first time. A conference presentation proposal I put together with my unofficial advisor in the School of Education at Pitt had successfully made it through the difficult American Educational Research Association’s review process. So me, my professor, and two other School of Education grad students were headed to the Big Easy to take in the sights and the serious scholarship that would be discussed, ad nauseum, the first full week of April.

The only reasonable flight I could book was with Continental, flying me into Houston first, then a crop duster connection to Nawleans. Since I knew I had family in Houston, I managed to get something that is very hard to do in the post-9/11 age — an extended layover. Because my mother only had infrequent contact with her brothers, I had to do some pre-Google detective work. I went to Hillman Library and pull out old phone books to look up numbers for my uncles Paul, George, Hobart, Darryl and Robert.

It turned out that my Uncle Paul was no longer in Houston, that my uncles George, Hobart and Darryl constantly moved — their numbers weren’t always up to date — but my mother did have my Uncle Robert’s number. But him and his wife had fought over a telephone bill in ’89. And because my Uncle Robert refused to pay the bill, their phone service had been cut off for nearly five years. So I wrote my Uncle Robert about a month before to let him know I was coming. I also lucked out, finding a recent number for my Uncle George, which linked me to his new number. Between the letter and my first adult conversation with a Gill relative other than my mother or Uncle Sam, I hoped that someone would be at the airport in Houston to meet me.

It was a 6 am flight that my Carnegie Mellon colleague Marilyn Zoidis dutifully dropped me off for, picking me up around 4:30. It was still in the 40s, with the high that cloudy day 53 degrees. I barely went through security and boarded my flight at the barely two-year-old Pittsburgh International Airport when I just fell asleep. I was on my first flight to somewhere other than New York or Pittsburgh, and I slept through it as if I took this flight all of the time. I remember being more excited about meeting them than about the AERA annual meeting. Yet the only thing I thought of for two and a half hours was something in the middle of dreamland.

We landed in Houston around 9 am local time. I slept well on the flight, but I had only had about five hours total sleep before arriving in Bush country. I expected a dump of an airport, but the George H. W. Bush Intercontinental Airport (it wasn’t call that at the time I think) was as modern as Pittsburgh. I got down to baggage claim, and there they were. Uncle George and Uncle Darryl were there, grinning and smiling as if they knew me a mile away. “I knew it was you, with that Gill nose,” he said as he walked toward me and gave me a big hug.

We got in George’s car, but about five minutes in, I had to ask them to open up the windows. It was 78 degrees in Houston, and it was just after 10 am by the time I had taken off my Georgetown sweatshirt. We stopped by a gas station near downtown Houston first, to get gas and to get me something to eat and drink. Then they immediately went to the third ward to hang out with friends and play basketball. They only let me take three shots, and I missed all three, tired as I was. “We need real ballers out here,” my Uncle George said.

My uncles were good, but given the amount of time they spent on the court, they should’ve been. They both played basketball in high school in Bradley, Arkansas. Heck, all of the Gill boys played at least two sports growing up. My Uncle Sam played four — basketball, football, baseball, and track — and all of the others at least played basketball and football. George at thirty-two and Darryl at twenty-eight (neither of them like me calling them “Uncle,” with me twenty-four at the time) were still in pretty good shape, though Darryl complained about his midsection. They kept asking me, “Are you sure you’re a Gill?,” based on three shots I missed, including two that rimmed out.

Eventually I’d meet my Uncle Robert, his wife and sons, my Uncle Darryl’s girlfriend and eventual wife, and a few of Uncle George’s friends that weekend. Of all of the family meetings that took place, none was more meaningful than me sitting down to dinner that Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon with three of my uncles at one time. They grilled me with more questions than I’d get from my dissertation committee some five months later. “How big sis [my mother] doin’?” “Do any of the kids play sports?” “What’s it like livin’ in the big city?” Even though my mother had been on welfare for eleven years, and living in poverty for some thirteen — working or not — they still thought that we were doing better than they were living in the middle of Texas. I tried, but failed, to convince them that our poverty was real.

It was a weird conversation, seeing that it was happening in the dining and living rooms of my Uncle Robert’s ranch style house, a four-bedroom, two-bath home with a carport, backyard and decent front yard in suburban Houston. They owned four cars, and a leaky boat that needed some repairs. Pretty good for a man with a high school diploma and someone who was a shift supervisor for a local trucking company. Uncle Robert was the man, a six-five rail-thin man who looked almost like he could be his brother Sam’s twin instead of slightly younger brother at forty-three or forty-four years old. But Uncle Robert and the rest of them all assumed that since my mother hadn’t come running back to Texas or Arkansas for help that things were all right. They weren’t, as they’d learn a year later when the 616 fire left my mother and younger siblings homeless.

Beyond that, I learned a lot about the family. I confirmed some of the stories that my mother had told me over the years, including the one about my half-Irish, half Choctaw/Black great-great grandmother who was born in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) in 1880. I also learned that my grandmother Beulah was originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma, that I really did have a great-grand aunt in Seattle, apparently New Edition lead singer Johnny Gill’s grandmother or great-grandmother, making all of us related.

I found out that someone on the Gill side besides me and my mother had made it to college, that my Uncle Paul used basketball to make it to the University of Houston, as part of Phi Slamma Jamma in the early ’80s with Clyde Drexler, among others. He left a year early to play in the NBA for the 14-68 Houston Rockets in the ’82-’83.  My Uncle Paul played 28 games that year, before his knee problems and relative lack of talent (he’d likely be a starter on one of today’s weaker teams) left him without a basketball career after that season. But he also pulled himself up, went to ITT Technical Institute to learn about using laser technologies and lighting for entertainment purposes, and broke into the world of entertainment as a freelance laser light and lighting technician. As I’d learn more about the following month when I visited my Uncle Paul in Atlanta, he had worked with Earth, Wind and Fire and New Edition on their tours in the late ’80s, and was living as if he were playing in the NBA.

I learned a lot that weekend, had a lot of fun with family, and learned more about my mother’s side of my family in two days than I had in my twenty-four years on planet Earth. That my uncles were and remained close was heartening, and that they managed to get decent and good-paying jobs was encouraging. It also gave me some sense of reassurance, if not pride, in the fact that they had put their lives together in Houston without any real guidance from family. Although they did follow my mother’s example by playing sports, getting their high school diplomas, and leaving Bradley, Arkansas and cotton country for a better future somewhere else. By the time I boarded my flight to New Orleans that Sunday evening, I felt like I knew enough to talk about my family, mother’s and father’s side, for the first time.