The Temptations of Pizza

12 Tuesday Apr 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon New York, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture, race, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

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Advertisements, Challenge Scholarship, College Applications, College Brochures, Mineo's Pizza Shop (Pittsburgh), National Honor Society, Pitt, Pizza, Sales Pitch, SAT score, Self-Discovery, Self-Reflection, Sicilian Pizza Pie, The 'O'

Pitt logo, the one closest to what was on their brochures in April 1986, April 12, 2016. (http://pitt.edu).

It’s been a full thirty years since I received a big envelope in the mail from my future alma mater. No, not that one. It wasn’t the big packet about my life-changing. No, it was their introduction.

It was at the end of a school day, and like clockwork, I went downstairs to check our mail. There it was. It was always news whenever I got mail, at least to me. It was a packet from the University of Pittsburgh, or rather Pitt. It was more the latter because the Pitt logo was gigantic and on the back of the large white envelope.

I opened the packet immediately. I barely began to read the form letter introducing me to Pitt and all of its eclectic buildings, wonderful faculty and staff, and precocious students, when I saw the brochure. On it was writing that formed a circle, something like “Pitt, a world of possibilities” (I say “something like” because I don’t really remember what it said, but that’s what I translated it to mean).

A cheese pizza similar to the one used on that ’86 Pitt brochure (only a LOT less orange), April 12, 2016. (http://student.plattsburgh.edu).

The writing circle surrounded a large, traditional, New York-style plain cheese pizza. The background of the brochure was set in Pitt’s traditional medium light blue. With the writing all in white, that pizza pie stood out like it was in 4D. I could smell it, taste it, lick it, eat it at that moment. My sixteen-year-old bean pole ass probably would’ve eaten a slice or two, too, if I hadn’t already planned to go down the street to a pizza shop for a Sicilian slice.

Never mind the letter that mentioned that I had been identified because of my 1050 SAT score from October ’85 and because of my National Honor Society membership. Forget about the fact that I didn’t even know where Pittsburgh was or what kind of city it was. Did I even notice that Pitt was starting a new academic scholarship program to attract more students of color and women to the university?

No, I was focused squarely on this picture of culinary beauty, a pizza after my own stomach, er, heart. I wanted to be at a college where I had an opportunity to eat that pizza, to feel my teeth bite down on that rich combination of tomato sauce, olive oil, basil, oregano, bread, mozzarella, and parmesan. I needed to feel those tidbits fall from the back of my mouth and into my throat before gravitating their way into my waiting stomach, to have that enzymatic orgasm.

But then I remembered the last time I made an academic decision on an empty stomach. That was in May ’81. Right after the Humanities Program had accepted me into their fold for middle school, I had to pick a language. The only choices were between French, Italian, and Spanish. My muy estupido culo picked Italiano over the other two. Why? Because I loved, absolutely loved, spaghetti. I loved spaghetti the way some people love their dogs. That’s not a reason, that’s literally a gut decision! I imagine that I would’ve picked Mandarin Chinese if it had been on the language menu because I loved Papa Wong’s egg rolls and chicken fried rice!

I decided to do some serious background research on Pitt and Pittsburgh before I would even suggest the idea of applying their to anyone. They was only the first college to invite me to apply, after all. I hadn’t planned on going out-of-state. As desperate as I was to leave 616 and Mount Vernon, I pretty much only saw myself applying to schools within 100 miles of New York City, like Columbia or Yale or Concordia College. Obviously I hadn’t yet thought through the places I really wanted to spend four or more years of my life. I just knew I didn’t want to spend most of it under the same roof with my insane family.

*************************

Mineo’s Pizza House, Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, November 22, 2008. (http://thepodanys.blogspot.com/).

Fast forward to my junior year at Pitt. At that point, I’d been in Pittsburgh for nearly three years, and had yet to find that elusive New York-style cheese pizza pie they used to lure me to this po-dunk town. Oh, they said the pizza they used in that brochure was from The ‘O’, The Original Hot Dog Shop on Forbes Avenue in Oakland near the Cathedral of Learning for those unfamiliar with Pitt and Pittsburgh. Except their pizza was wack. It was a greasy pile of limp cheapness, with mozzarella that probably came from an arthritic cow, olive oil that was strained from Wish-Bone Italian dressing, and dough made out of Wonder Bread. Since Pittsburgh’s water came from reservoirs or from the Allegheny or Monongahela River, it didn’t come close to tasting like that pizza on the brochure either.

But at the end of ’96, the same month my advisor finally said he’d sign off on my doctoral thesis, I finally found my elusive pizza in Pittsburgh. It was at Mineo’s Pizza on Murray Avenue in Squirrel Hill. I’d probably passed the joint three dozen times in nine years, but never at night. I stopped there with my girlfriend (now wife) Angelia, and we bought a couple of slices. Not only were they good, but they had an added bonus. They specialized in Sicilian pies! After nine years, I finally found a slice of food heaven in Pittsburgh!

Second Semester Crunch Time

21 Thursday Jan 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture, race, University of Pittsburgh, Work, Youth

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Academic Preparation, Affirmative Action, Challenge Scholarship, College Board, College Retention, Coursework, ETS, Friendships, Internalized Racism, Internalized Sexism, Perseverance, Pitt, Predictability, Righteous Indignation, SAT, Self-Determination, Self-Discovery, Single-Minded

Maybe not a HOF, but a great crunch time catch (literal and figurative) by Terrell Owens, San Francisco 49ers vs. Green Bay Packers, Wildcard Game, Candlestick Park, January 3, 1999. (http://sfgate.com).

As this spring semester begins for me at UMUC — a cruel euphemism in January with a windchill around -10°C and a major winter storm approaching the Mid-Atlantic — I’ve reminded myself of the same calendar twenty-eight years ago. As I’ve already noted through my blog and through Boy @ The Window, this was to be a make-or-break semester for me. I had to step up my game at the University of Pittsburgh or go home. And by home, I mean to 616, a place in Mount Vernon, New York that might as well been my burial plot if I had managed to lose my Challenge Scholarship after that Winter Term 1988.

As I wrote in my book

Despite my advisor, I decided to take a full load of classes, balancing two math courses with two history ones, with “rocks for jocks” Geology being the fifth one. The others were Western Civ II, Roman History, Calculus II (the regular one, not Honors), and Logic.

It was to be a sixteen-credit semester. My advisor, a one-time PhD candidate in the History Department at Pitt (talk about life have no coincidences, past, present or future), thought that after my 2.63 first semester, that I had no business making my college schedule more difficult. But after four years of Sylvia Fasulo at Mount Vernon High School, I decided I was through taking advice about taking it easy. I might’ve not known much about my inner self in January ’88, but I knew this much. I was never the guy to take the easy, path-of-least-resistance road in my education. Fact is, I never had the choice of an easy road at any point in my life.

The only obviously easy course of the five I took was Geology 89, and it was only easy because it was a lecture hall course with three multiple choice exams and one textbook. Calc II — with its focus on integrals, volumes, spheres, and other pre-differential calculations — I figured would be easier than Honors Calc I, partly because I excelled on this part of the AP Calculus course the year before (I probably earned my 3 on the AP Calc BC exam on the strength of that work), and partly because this wasn’t an Honors course.

Advanced logic equations, January 20, 2016. (http://www.galilean-library.org).

Then there was Logic. An ironic choice of a title, since the course didn’t make sense to me from day one. Inductive and deductive reasoning, so the British-born professor told us the first day. With so many symbols and few numbers, how could I consistently deduce an answer to any logic equation? And, what the heck did any of this have to do with being a Computer Science major, anyway?

As for Western Civ II and Roman History, I was surprised how easy I found both courses by the third week, especially after my debacle in East Asian History the month before. But then again, I didn’t miss a single class, I stayed ahead on my readings — and though I knew nearly half of the material going in — and studied as if I’d never been an A student in a history course before.

I had taken the shame of the first semester, the embarrassment of my internalized -isms and imperfections, the anger I directed toward myself, my family, and my idiot dorm mates and let it fuel me. I was on a righteous path of academic vengeance. At least that’s what I thought at the time.

A Planters Peanut Bar, April 25, 2011. (Evan-Amos via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

That sober, almost single-minded focus got me noticed, even though it was my attempt at trying to lay low. I made quite a few friends that semester, most of whom I still call friend today. All of them anywhere between one and twenty years older than me. Call it a sense of maturity, my angered march toward my future, or the sense that I needed to be around folks whose lives had taken at least half as many twists and turns as my own. Whatever it was, I ended up on a path where having a social life would play as much a role in saving my educational future as showing up to all but four lectures in a sixteen-week semester.

I finished that second semester on the Dean’s List with a 3.33 GPA, and a first-year GPA of 3.02. Two A’s (my history classes), an A- in Geology, a B in Calc II, and a C+ in Logic (I did learn a few things even in that course). By the end of April, I was already thinking about switching majors to History. Of more immediate importance was my saving my scholarship for year number two. Not to mention, having friends of any significance for the first time since elementary school.

====================================================

Affirmative action opponents from Supreme Court Justices Antonio Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Chief Justice John Roberts — as well as Allan Bakke, Jennifer Gratz, Barbara Gruttinger, and Abigail Fisher — all claim that efforts to use the admissions process to bring racial (and gender and socioeconomic) diversity to college campuses is discriminatory. The College Board and ETS cite their statistics to show that the SAT is especially predictive of a student’s performance in the first semester or first year. Anyone working on college retention — especially for underrepresented students — recognizes that nearly half of all students who drop out of college do so after the first two semesters.

Orange Crush can crushed, June 8, 2012. (Susan Murtaugh via Flickr.com).

I knew none of this my second semester at Pitt. No one could’ve predicted my first semester’s depression or the single-minded channeling of anger and intellectual resources my second, least of all me. And no, Justice Scalia, college at a school of the stature of the University of Pittsburgh wasn’t too hard for me. It wouldn’t have been too hard for me at any other university for that matter. Life was. And yes, Ms. Gratz and Ms. Fisher, race played a significant role in where I was, where I wanted to be, and how I got there. Just not to your entitled, narcissistic disadvantage.

As for ETS and the College Board, your predictions of my struggles and triumphs based on my 65th percentile 1120 score from October ’86 were more than a bit premature. And not just mine. Fact is, the vast majority of people like me attending predominantly White institutions graduate, whether the campus climate is welcoming or not. However, having a welcoming climate, just as the one I began to discover my second semester, really helps. I guess you couldn’t predict that.

The Cold Light of Grades

05 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, earth, wind & fire, Eclectic, Jimme, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture, race, University of Pittsburgh, Work, Youth

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Ann Jannetta, Challenge Scholarship, Continental Airlines, Crush #2, Dean's List, Disillusionment, East Asian History, Financial Aid, General Foods, Grades, Grinding, Homesickness, Humanities, Internalized Racism, Masculinity, Mom, Mother-Son Relationship, MVHS, Newark International Airport, Phyllis, Pitt, Racism, Self-Discovery, Sexism, Stereotype Threat, Travel

University of Pittsburgh after a snow storm, Cathedral of Learning, downloaded January 5, 2016. (http://www.everystockphoto.com).

Dateline, Tuesday, January 5, 2016. Exactly twenty-eight years ago on this day and date, I left Mount Vernon and New York for my second semester at the University of Pittsburgh. I sensed, but did not know, that this was a make-or-break time for me as a student and as a person. At least when that day began. I had a 5 pm Continental Airlines flight out of Newark (my last time flying out of there, thank God!), and had plenty of time to kill before catching a cab to East 241st at 2 pm to catch the 2 Subway to 42nd, the Shuttle to Grand Central, and then the Carey Bus to New Jersey.

Then the mailman arrived a bit earlier than I expected, around 12:30 pm. I’d been anticipating and dreading this moment for seventeen days, since Saturday, December 19, the morning of my last final in Pascal.

The day I was scheduled to go back to Pittsburgh was also the day I finally received my grades. I earned an easy A in Astronomy, a B- in Pascal, and a C in Honors Calc. All three of those grades I expected. The C in East Asian History was completely unexpected. My grade point average for the semester gave me a 2.63 to start my postsecondary career. That might’ve been good enough for most folks. But of course not for me. My Challenge Scholarship absolutely depended on me maintaining a minimum 3.0 average at the end of every school year in order for me to stay eligible. That was my wake up call to what I’d allowed Phyllis, and my thoughts of her and me — and of her with me — to do to me. I didn’t even give Mom the chance to see my grades.

Because I was seventeen when my first semester began, my Mom was still the responsible adult and my Mom’s address the primary address for my academic records. This was the first and last time I received my Pitt grades this way.

I was so mad. But I was more disillusioned than angry, especially with myself and my view of the world. I knew I had no margin for error this Winter/Spring semester at Pitt. I needed to raise my overall GPA to a 3.0 or higher in order to keep my academic scholarship for my sophomore year. I could barely afford Pitt as it was, between room and board and books. It wasn’t as if I could depend on Mom and my father to keep sending me money. They had sent a total of $480 my way that first semester. I was still $1,200 behind on my Pitt bill, even with student loans and me working sixteen hours a week.

The days after I got back to my dorm I spent assessing my situation and what to do about it. The first decision I made was to consolidate the funds I managed to secure at the end of December. I had General Foods cover my remaining room and board payments for the school year, increased my Stafford Loan amount for the semester, and marched down to Thackeray Hall. I waited all day to take care of my bills, get my few hundred dollars of leftover cash from all of my aid — all of which I needed for books — and registered for classes. The last part took the most time, and was the hardest to do. The low the second morning of the semester was two below zero, and the high that day was eight above. Fahrenheit, not Celsius. I stood in line outside for over an hour in that weather surrounded by two feet of snow with the occasional winds and snow drifts before getting inside at nine that morning.

But in the moments I had that week, between some quiet time for myself and in discussing my performance with two of my professors (I just couldn’t believe I earned a C in East Asian History!), I realized two or three things. One was that I over-performed, given how depressed I was the last seven weeks of the semester. I missed nearly three out of every four classes in November, and nearly forty percent of my East Asian History class during the entire semester. I went without a textbook for Honors Calc I after someone stole it from my job in the computer labs in the Cathedral of Learning at the end of October. I managed a solid C in the course anyway. It could’ve been much worse.

Two was that my East Asian History professor Ann Jannetta was right. I really was “lucky” to have managed a C in an upper-level history course my first semester of college. I still acted as if I was in Humanities at A.B. Davis Middle School or MVHS, that a C was some indication of low IQ or confirmation that Whites had bigger brains or something. Jannetta was very encouraging. It was the first time any of my professors had made me feel like I belonged in college.

The most important thing I realized, though, was that I couldn’t let anyone or anything get in the way of me bringing my A-game (or A- game, maybe) every semester and in every course. Phyllis didn’t matter. My internalized sexism or what others though of me because of their racism didn’t matter. My idiot classmates or parents didn’t matter. Heck, being hungry, cold, and short on money didn’t matter. All that mattered was my ability to do what I did best back then. Get A’s in bunches when I needed to.

Of course, all these things really did matter. I merely decided to play the game of college that semester with a combination of fear and anger, arrogance and obliviousness. To the tune of a 3.33 and the Dean’s List! Yay me!

But when that semester ended on Saturday, April 30, those demons and distractions resurfaced. Oh, the days before I spent five days homeless and weeks eating tuna fish and pork neck bones!

The Miracle of Dr. Jack Daniel

16 Monday May 2011

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, Politics, race, Youth

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"Sometimes Starvation", Cathedral of Learning, Challenge Scholarship, Department of HIstory, Diversity, Divine Intervention, Dr. Jack Daniel, Dr. Jack L. Daniel, Grad School, Graduate Fellowships, History Department, Jack Daniel, Joe Carbone, Miracles, Pitt, Qualifications, Race, Students of Color, University of Pittsburgh, Van Beck Hall, Westchester County Department of Community Mental Health

Dr. Jack L. Daniel, University of Pittsburgh, 2004. Pitt Magazine. http://www.pittmag.pitt.edu/summer2004/feature1.html. The use of this photo falls under fair use under US Copyright laws because this blog post is in fact about the subject in this photo.

Last week I started a conversation about my three weeks of starvation in order to secure my entry into graduate school through my post, “Sometimes Starvation.” I’m continuing that conversation with today’s post. For it was that on this date twenty years ago that divine intervention came in the form of a voice inside my head, leading me to a meeting with then University of Pittsburgh Vice-Provost for Academic Affairs, Dr. Jack L. Daniel.

Even as I turned down the opportunity to go back to Mount Vernon and work up in White Plains with Joe Carbone and Westchester County Department of Community Mental Health for the summer of ’91, a name kept popping in my head. And I didn’t know why. I’d only met Jack Daniel on two occasions, both during my freshman year at Pitt. I was a Challenge Scholar, in the inaugural class of Challenge Scholars no less, a merit-based half-tuition scholarship meant to attract more students of color to Pitt, and Dr. Daniel was the author of the program.

I knew that he was a professor with expertise in Black communications. I also knew that he was one of the activists who helped bring the Black Studies Department to Pitt in ’69 by occupying the central computing system on the seventh floor of the Cathedral of Learning, back when he was a freshly minted Ph.D. Other than that, I had zero contact with the man in my four years of undergrad.

For once, I listened to the voice inside my head and, after some coaxing of Dr. Daniel’s assistant, made an appointment with him to discuss my financial options for going to Pitt for my history MA. I figured that I had nothing to lose. I really only hoped that there was an extra $1,000 or two left in his budget that would at least help to feed me through my first year of grad school.

That Thursday, the sixteenth of May, I arrived at my 2:30 pm meeting with Dr. Daniel on the eighth floor of the Cathedral of Learning, not knowing exactly what I was going to say. I walked into the Office of the Provost, where the stale stone of the super-tall building turned into the sights and smells of dark wood, cherry, mahogany even. We exchanged pleasantries, shook hands, and I sat down feeling like I was in sixth grade instead of like I’d recently finished my bachelor’s.

I started. “I’m looking for a little extra money for grad school this fall, so that I don’t have to borrow money to cover tuition and eat,” I said. Dr. Daniel then asked

“What was your GPA here?”

“A 3.4,” I said, rounding up from a 3.37 average.

“What about your GRE scores?”

“60th and 70th percentile on math and reading,” I said.

“What about your major?,” Dr. Daniel asked.

“I was a history major with a 3.82 average,” I said with a smile.

Then Dr. Daniel got this look on his face, like he was actually angry, like there was a piece to the puzzle that I was missing. “Hold on for a second, I need to make a phone call,” he said.

He called Pitt’s History Department Chair, who at the time was one of my future grad school professors, Van Beck Hall, and spent the next couple of minutes chewing him out about my record and about why I hadn’t been awarded a fellowship. I sat there with a stone face, not wanting to give away the sense of glee I felt watching Dr. Daniel on the phone while verbally beating up on a department chair. Politely, of course.

After he got off the phone, he said, “You’ve got your money for school next year.” My mouth fell open, and not just because I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe how easy it was. Then Dr. Daniel explained how his office had worked with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (and the other major schools within the university) to create a new fellowship to attract more students of color and women into Pitt’s grad programs. He also explained how some departments and programs had resisted communicating the existence of this new fellowship program to potential grad students. I apparently was another case demonstrating how some folks within the university simply refused to address Pitt’s lack of diversity at the graduate level.

I was beyond thankful. Incredulous, thankful, even speechless. I couldn’t stop shaking Dr. Daniel’s hand. Despite three weeks and a loss of twenty-plus pounds, I played basketball at Pitt’s athletic center that evening, making shots as if I’d been on an athlete’s diet for the past three weeks. I was more excited about the possibility of grad school being paid for than I was about getting my first paycheck of the summer that Friday.

The following Tuesday evening, the twenty-first of May, I saw Dr. Daniel walking down Fifth Avenue outside of the Cathedral of Learning as I was on my evening walk home from work. I told him that I’d gotten the paperwork for my full-tuition fellowship and $7,000 graduate student assistantship stipend for the ’91-’92 school year. As he walked away after I said, “Thank you!,” again, I yelled “You’re the man!” All Dr. Daniel did was stretch out his long arms, shrugging it off as if he’d given me a nickel to buy a Tootsie Roll.