Changes

This morning as I was driving across the Bay Bridge I was remembering about where my school education began.
My first school ever was in New York, specifically the Bronx. All I remember about that place was that I felt so alone, so abandoned, that the teacher did not allow me to write the number “8” upside down so I lived in constant fear of being critized for writing it different. I also used to wonder what was wrong with me? Just because I used to start writing the number from the bottom instead of the top, like almost everyone else. I remember there was one day a huge knife fight began in the school and I ran out earlier than usual to my bus stop. Then the last thing I remember was me saying, “so that is it, I am done. No more school!” and my mom clarified to me that I still had many years of school left… You see even at that age I didn’t understand why we had to fake graduations from primary school when we had so many grades left.

After that school year my mom and I moved to the Dominican Republic. I remember one time I attended school at a lot. What do I mean by lot? Well, the teacher had a board, some chalk, and the students, me and my cousins, sat literally on rocks while she taught. There was no roof, no walls just a bunch of rocks and left overs from an abandoned construction site.

Don’t get me wrong, there are many fancy schools in the Dominican Republic but then there are also some very poor ones such as that one.
The last school I attended in the Dominican Republic had small classrooms and big boards. I remember that back then my biggest worries were guessing how to spell tomato in Spanish in final test. My mom was waiting for me at the door of the classroom (had come to pick me up) and whispered the answer to me, since I had been taking so long and was sitting so close to the door.

As I was going thru all of these memories it all the sudden hit me that I was a girl that had gone from learning how to add while sitting on a rock to the Gladstone Institute and learning how to transfect cells. I smiled.
What a transition huh? We’ve come a long way baby! We sure as hell have!