First, a little background…
Over 20 years ago, during my Freshman year at Princeton, I connected with a kid from El Paso who worked at the campus Student Center with me. He’d come from relatively humble beginnings like me and was using work-study to help pay his way through college, just like me. Over the years, we developed a great friendship and ended up becoming roommates during our Junior and Senior years. Even though it’s been many years since we graduated, we’ve kept in touch and remain friends to this day. Gotta love those lifelong friendships, right?
So, that’s the background…Now, let’s bring it to the present day. After earning a law degree and practicing as an attorney, Dan eventually found a passion for teaching and is now an Economics teacher at Jack E. Singley Academy in Irving, TX. From what he’s told me, he absolutely loves being in the classroom and one of the most rewarding parts of his job is that he gets to lead a program called Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID), which prepares students for the college application process and for life on campus once they matriculate. I seriously could have benefited from a program like that 20+ years ago when I was in those students’ shoes.
Recently, Dan reached out to me and, to my surprise, told me that he had created an assignment for his AVID students built around this website. The idea is for the students to read through my old blog entries and learn about the path that I’ve taken to get to where I am today. I was floored and humbled when he told me about this and it still has me shaking my head…I can’t believe that I’m actually the focus of a class assignment. Not bad for a scraggly lil’ dude from the country. 🙂
I’d like to give a big shout-out to the students in the AVID program who are reading the past entries in my blog and learning about my story. I’ve got to admit that there’s a lot of foolishness in there early on (because I never knew that it would be read all of those years later), but I’ve been told that there are some pearls of wisdom too. Rest assured that everything that you’ll see in there is 100% honest and straight from the heart and mind of a guy who wants you to succeed. It’s all about setting big goals for yourself, which is what my man Dan and I did, so just know that each of you can do the same.
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