Dr. Robert Velez
I was a child of New York City in the 1970’s, but as I joke with my students, please don’t hold that against me. I grew up in the borough of Queens, in the Ozone Park neighborhood. As luck would have it, I was able recently to visit the “old stomping grounds” of that part of Queens recently with my adult children; more so with my son as I took him through my part of Queens and we stopped in several locations that allow memories to flood back. If you think about it, our memories are our own little time machines.
While Queens is one of the official five boroughs that make up New York City (along with Brooklyn, The Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island), to us, kids in the 1970’s and early 80’s, when you said, ‘The City’, what you meant was really Manhattan. As public school students in The Big Apple, we had educational opportunities that were world-class. The American Museum of Natural History, for example. My classes went there at least twice, if not more. As is the case with many of our memories, we wish we appreciated those times more when they were happening in hopes that we could add that hologram to our library of memories.
We once took a class trip to the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan. I’m not much for heights, but it’s hard not to be impressed that human technology is capable of building such a thing. And doing it while simultaneously building a twin structure right next door. Another lost opportunity for me as the memories of that field trip are not that vivid. I suppose that could also have something to do with getting older.
I’m sure my experience growing up is similar to most others: you spend time essentially coming to realize that there’s more to the world than just you and your little community. I think that is a significant part of learning; be it in the primary and secondary levels or at higher education levels. Understanding that as much as we are each individuals, we are also part of a larger whole. We share common values as much as we disagree on how to make those values come into reality.
Sharing experiences as well as values can help us see one another as equal participants in history. The country got a cold dose of shared experience on September 11, 2001. I was living in Minneapolis at the time and working for the county human services department. My office was in the Family Justice Center in downtown Minneapolis. It was still being renovated at the time as the county had purchased the building from the feds; it had formerly housed the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) field office along with several other federal offices.
We went into a conference room without windows for about an hour. As we were walking in a colleague had asked aloud if anyone had heard about a plane crashing into the Twin Towers in Manhattan. He said he heard something on on the news and that maybe it was a solo pilot that had a health episode in his personal prop plane. We all sort of shrugged and thought it was just another quirky thing to happen in the news.
By the time we were leaving the conference room, much of the horror of that day had already unfolded. I still get choked up thinking about it.
Seek out those shared experiences; especially while you’re here at college. Not every shared experience will be as impactful as 9/11, of course, but they do represent an investment into your own time machine. It’s an investment you’ll be glad you made.
