Fight Through It: An interview with Gen Z author Jared Weiss by Kirpal Gordon

 

KIRPAL GORDON: I saw online news of your memoir. I clicked Buy Fight Through It and your description of its contents knocked me out! It sounded so much like the you that I remember from our writing class in spring semester of 2015: “The story of my life and how I overcame a life-threatening illness, my path to healing, as well as what I have learned throughout my journey---most notably that nothing worth having comes easy and there is divine meaning and purpose in everything.”

I know a lot has happened to you since you posted “The Power of Belief” at Taking Giant Steps: November 2015. In that essay, you write: “The illness started last fall (2014) with a severe pneumonia in one of my lungs after being misdiagnosed with the flu. I was placed into a medically induced coma for two days and put on a ventilator and feeding tube. After this, I had an autoimmune response to the infection, so my body produced too many antibodies which blocked certain receptors in my brain and caused my body to have these odd movements; I couldn’t walk or talk at all at first. I was in four different hospitals for a total of six weeks, but thankfully the doctor at the second hospital was an unbelievable person who figured out everything right away and placed me on high doses of steroids over the next few months. I also had to go through numerous therapies and had post-traumatic stress disorder, which was treated by a psychologist. In addition, I had to re-learn how to do basically everything that I had been capable of prior to the illness.”

So catch us up on your college education and the recovery of your health.

 

JARED WEISS: I attended Cornell University in the fall semester of 2014. But my whole health situation started in September of that year. So then after forfeiting the rest of that semester to focus on my health (and of course being in hospitals for most of that semester), I met you at Hofstra for my first official semester in spring of 2015. After my one semester at Hofstra, I transferred to NYU. I finished my 4 years as a Nutrition and Dietetics major and graduated in 2019. So all things considered, including health challenges throughout, I am proud of myself and I know finishing up made my parents proud.  

My health has definitely changed since 2015. It’s crazy because at that time I thought I had all the answers that I was going to have about my life-threatening illness, but there was so much more to learn. And truthfully, I believe I was meant to go on this journey of self-discovery both about the illness and myself. At that time I thought and was told that everything I went through was basically random. Around 2016 however, I started having some digestive issues, once again seemingly random. That summer I was also sick several times with strep and upper respiratory infections, and also had a bunch of physical injuries too.

 

KIRPAL GORDON: What did your doctors say?

 

JARED WEISS: They didn’t have any explanation. Then I had a brief time period of stability, and my speech from the initial. really severe slur had shown some improvement albeit not perfect. I thought maybe things were finally close to being fully better or at least on that path. But the end of 2017 comes and I got hit with a whole slew of new and worsening health challenges. I reached a point where I couldn’t digest any foods properly except for only two foods which caused some issues as well. I was constantly vomiting and nauseous all the time with severe heartburn too. Next, I developed a stammer and stutter, and on top of this had some balance issues too. The next year was spent seeing and speaking to close to 30 different doctors all with no explanation for why this was happening and only telling me how to “manage the symptoms.”

 

 

KIRPAL GORDON: Managing symptoms? That sounds like they may have given up on a remedy or your recovery.

 

JARED WEISS: After enough frustration and fear that things were going to get even worse, I started researching things for myself and started looking into natural healing and holistic health. At first, due to the scarcity of information out there at the time, as well as not having any real guidance on how to go about this, I was trying different things but wasn’t getting any results. Finally, in 2019, I received my first glimmer of hope. I found a holistic practitioner in NYC, who then connected me with another practitioner in Florida, who did testing. The tests revealed that all of the systems in my body were compromised, as well as I had an ulcer, SIBO, and leaky gut, amongst a multitude of other problems. This was the start of discovering some potential causes to why I got so sick in the first place and why I developed subsequent health challenges, all of which I discuss extensively in my book. Anyway, we started on some supplements like probiotics and enzymes, as well as and homeopathic stuff too, along with detoxification methods. However, this first practitioner didn’t have the full picture. I definitely made some progress and this was a valuable stepping stone, but I then used 2 more practitioners over the next few years and continued researching. I did a ton of heavy metal detoxification, improved lymphatic drainage and nutrition amongst getting out in nature, as well as grounding and colonics amongst other tools. So my digestion has improved drastically, and I have a very healthy wide variety diet. However, I also since realized that I went too far with certain things. So this brings me to where I’m at now, trying to balance everything out and rehydrate my system after having done all the detox work. And I could go into full detail as to what exactly is going on, but to sum things up, I feel I finally have the complete picture, definitely understand everything now and am on the path to full healing. Currently while I am still dealing with these speech challenges and digestive challenges, I know I will reach a full recovery. I have come a long way since the beginning. Despite these challenges, I’m also physically the strongest I’ve ever been, and keep an amazing positive and optimistic attitude. I am extremely proud of myself and where I’m at. Once again, This is just an overview, but of course I go into everything in more depth in the book.

 

KIRPAL GORDON: And the highlights are riveting stuff. What hit me the hardest was your taking ownership of your own health, after so many experts got it wrong. That’s good medicine to think on and it’s a story worth celebrating in print, especially for people who ail and have lost faith in how medicine is practiced. To cope with the barrage of system breakdown, you really had to dig down deeply. That’s grit. Hey, I wasn’t the only one in class who knew you had that level of fortitude. It’s also all over that essay post I quoted from earlier, “The Power of Belief,” which became part of the curriculum and certainly influenced my writing students to Fight Through It. Would you say part of your recovery has involved athletics, especially basketball?

 

JARED WEISS: I am still and have always been a baller. As I talk about my basketball journey in Fight Through It-starting from a young age to receiving college offers as an underdog undersized athlete, and playing AAU basketball for some top teams, including NBA player Tobias Harris’s dad’s team---basketball has been a big thing for me. I am still playing, always working on my skills and have a deep passion for the game. And most recently, after not having played in an actual league for the past few years, my younger brother (who played college ball) and I started setting up these highly competitive runs. And after doing those for a few months, we then played in a highly competitive Men’s League in Garden City which was full of former college and even some pro players.

I loved getting to play with my brother and we had some really cool moments. And even when I’m not playing with others, once again I love working on my skills and shooting around at home. I am still in the process of trying to dunk a basketball despite being only 5’6, and the highest vertical jump I have achieved to date is 36 inches. And I have touched the 10 foot rim multiple times. But due to all my health struggles at times sapping my energy, it has been another journey in and of itself that’s not always easy. I know that I am getting there, and just as with my health, great things take time! In addition to playing basketball, in recent years I have also coached some teams as well. So, it’s safe to say basketball will always have a huge role in my life in all forms!

 

KIRPAL GORDON: Playing hoops with your brother locally with great ball players---it sounds like you’re back on the block. And I saw at your Facebook page that you’ve been making podcasts. How long have you been doing this?

 

JARED WEISS: Yes I do 2 podcasts. The interesting thing was I first started making content in the summer of 2021. But initially I didn’t really have plans of turning it into a podcast. I thought to myself if I could inspire just one person and have fun doing it then it’s worth it. And everything I do in life I go all in so I quickly became passionate about every part of the process. My best friend James helped me cofound the channel and he joined me for some videos and is still incredibly supportive and helped give me the courage to get things going. But he doesn’t love being in videos the same way (even though he’s great at it) and it turned into a mostly solo project. To start things off we did a bunch of sports and workout videos but I would add in an inspiring message into all of them. Then about a year later I was asked to be on two other podcasts and I also did my first podcast style episode with a gym friend and I loved it. I realized I have a lot to say on a host of different topics. And speaking of which, that’s why I fell in love with content creation because I’m my own boss and I’m in charge of what content I make. For instance, I can post a basketball video then a holistic health video and then a motivational video, then a video about music or pro sports etc. There’s no limits as far as I see it. And that’s kind of what I need because I never wanted to settle on just one thing. After doing those podcast style episodes, I felt called to make the majority of my content podcasting. I then purchased all of the equipment and haven’t looked back since. However the crazy thing is as I spoke about I’ve been dealing with massive speech challenges and yet I felt called to start a podcast. Looking back, it almost sounds crazy. But, I’ve always believed having “delusional confidence” is the key to achieving anything big in life. That’s what I think separates the people who win in life; they believe in themselves when no one else does and when all odds are stacked against them. Here I was dealing with significant speech challenges, yet I felt drawn toward podcasting. But I realized that if I waited until everything was perfect, I might never start. The message became more important than the imperfections and maybe this would make my story that much more powerful; putting out content while still going through these challenges. Around this time of when I first started the podcast, I became fascinated by asking questions and exploring ideas that weren't always part of mainstream conversations after starting with the health ones. Of course this was sparked since as we spoke about, the doctors basically gave up on me and had no explanation for what I was going through. After years of not finding answers through conventional channels, I began researching widely and exploring different perspectives on health and healing. Then, I was speaking on some current events and exploring some deep rabbit holes, but it was always my intention to empower people. This led to me branching off and creating the Rabbit Hole Roundup as my 2nd podcast. However,  after some time I realized I had done what I wanted with those topics and it didn’t feel right to keep going with some of this stuff because I always wanted to focus on positivity and spreading peace and love and inspiring people. Over time, I realized my greatest strength wasn't analyzing what was wrong with the world—it was highlighting what was right with it and searching for the good that’s buried under the negativity. So rather than constantly try to pull positivity from negative stories, my strength has always been optimism. There’s already millions of people who love highlighting controversy and negative stories, so maybe this could be my niche and how I change the world. Yes I know there is bad and evil in the world and there is a time and place to talk about that (as I discuss a bit in my book) but, “Where focus goes energy flows” so I choose to focus on the good as often as possible. I slowly transitioned the Rabbit Hole Roundup podcast into finding positive news stories or some really cool clips I would come across on social media or pro sports talk, music talk, and movies talk too.

 

KIRPAL GORDON: What’s the name of the channel?

 

JARED WEISS: Jared and James, and it is all about life lessons, motivation, holistic health and inspiring others through personal examples and using lessons from movies sports etc. There is some overlap but I feel like between both channels, I have a good mix of all that represents me. It’s not always easy. It’s definitely challenging trying to make this my full time thing but I believe I’m definitely helping people and when you’re proud of the videos and are helping people and are genuine and authentic, you can’t lose. Even if it may take longer for me to become a big success, my patience on my healing journey has translated into patience on my content creation journey. And this actually leads me into the divine purpose question from my book. Content creation has taught me many of the same lessons my health journey taught me. Progress isn't always immediate. Sometimes you put your heart into something and see very little reward at first. But if you believe in what you're doing, you keep showing up, and count the small wins along the way; you get a ton out of it.

 

KIRPAL GORDON: I recall the last words of your book description: “There is divine meaning and purpose in everything.” Would you elaborate?

 

 

JARED WEISS: Interestingly, my journey into content creation is deeply connected to my beliefs about purpose and meaning. So I have a very strong belief in God and the universe and see it as a living thing. I don’t claim to know every answer on what God is exactly but I most definitely believe there is more to this realm than just what we see. And maybe my soul chose this experience. But I believe we all have lessons and blessings and the more lessons we learn on our paths the more blessings we experience. So when I say everything happens for a reason I don’t mean that I “deserved” to go through these massive health challenges but rather these may have been given to me to be a vessel for God to show others that anything is possible. I always believed that and would say that all the time even before all this, so I feel like maybe the universe was testing this belief. And everything I’ve been through has made me stronger physically, spiritually, and mentally. Now, I don’t mean this in an ego driven way, but it’s like from the movie IRobot where Will Smith’s character realizes he was the perfect person to go through everything he did. Well that’s how I feel, because most other people if given my challenges would’ve given up a long time ago. And even if someone doesn’t believe that everything happens for a reason and that the universe is working for them, acting like the universe is working for you will make you act on opportunities and say yes to life because you believe in how special you are. I don't expect everyone to share my beliefs. But for me, believing there is purpose in life's challenges gave me a framework for moving forward instead of getting stuck asking, “Why me?”

 

 

KIRPAL GORDON: I gathered from your posts that you are also sending your message out via merchandise. How did that come to pass?

 

JARED WEISS: Yes that is correct. As of last year I decided it was time to design some motivational shirts and come out with my own “clothing line.” I’m always looking for things with a good positive message to wear, so I realized why not do it myself? Ever since I was little and still to this day I’ve had my own style where I love wearing shirts with motivational sayings on them. So it felt like the time was right to make these to go along with the book and podcast. Now I have been a bit surprised, because I was expecting these to sell right away but I guess as always I’m reminded that nothing worth having comes easy. But beyond that I love wearing them and I wear them to the gym all the time and in all of my videos. And one cool story related to them, so they’ve been out for a year and yet initially outside of my family and a couple gym friends I barely sold any. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a few weeks ago I had 3 people at my gym in the same week comment on how much they loved my shirts and they all bought them. So that was a really cool lesson on the power of persistence. The book and the merch can be found on my website, jaredryanweiss.com.

 

 

KIRPAL GORDON: So what are you working on now? A second book?

 

JARED WEISS: Yes I am currently working on a second book. Initially my plan was to wait at least 5 years to even start writing again (because the first book took 4.5 years to finish so I needed a break lol). But, I guess when you’re a creative mind and a writer, you can’t always control when inspiration strikes! I still want to make sure my first book has the full opportunity to get its shine, especially because once again you never know when people are going to start finding it. So I want to make sure that Fight Through It has the best chance to get out there. But, I also figured it can’t hurt to have something new ready to come out when the time is right. I don’t want to give too much away (and of course I still have a ways to go with it) but I will say this... One of my favorite music artists is Andy Grammer, and one of his newer songs is called “Save A Spot In The Back For Me,” and the lyrics in this song really spoke to me. In the chorus he says, “So if nice guys finish last…then save a spot in the back for me.” I’ve always had people try to tell me I’m too nice and “nice guys finish last,” so this book is going to be centered around the idea that yes it may take longer for us nice guys to win, especially in a world that values speed and virality, but we win in the end. And we win in ways that might not be noticed right away. It’s also about having patience and being a late bloomer. It will have a similar format to the first book, however the first book I guess you could say was more autobiography first self help second, while this book is more self help first and autobiography second. This is still going to be full of personal examples and personal stories, and will include much of what I speak about in my videos and through my posts, but will have even more of an emphasis on the life lessons I’ve learned on my life’s journey.  

Just Another Loose Brick in the Wall by Kelsey Picciano

Homeostasis, the tendency of a system or a person to maintain internal stability and resist change, can get easily upset, especially in the change from high school to college. I definitely felt my homeostasis slip away on September 3, 2015, as I entered my first semester's composition class. The wildly gray-haired instructor with the observant blue eyes asked us to think of him as a coach or midwife and to call him KP, just like his writing clients do in the real world. He said looking at the backs of one another’s heads put us at a disadvantage, another example of how the education industry was “running game” on us, and invited us to arrange our desks into a circle so that we could see one another better. We wrote our names on tags we hung from our seats, looked around and introduced ourselves. After we read the syllabus aloud, he asked us to take ownership of the course, journal on our experience (75 pages!), get to know each other, author our own author-ity, discover our identities as writers and not mind a little homeostatic upset.

He may not have realized that his interrogation of everything had already threatened our homeostasis. As class ended, some shook their heads, rolled their eyes or huffed their discontent. Was he too unpredictable for the grade-centric, too participatory for the shy, too poetic for the more rectilinear among us? Although some called him a hopeless nut case, insane weirdo or serious whack job, I felt intrigued by his strange antics, irreverent disposition and passionate bursts of ideas. He wasn’t merely critiquing our conventional expectations; he was celebrating an alternative that would prove life-changing for me. So, over the next few weeks, I gathered the evidence, but his medicine proved useful only after I took to heart his diagnosis of our millennial generation’s illness—we’re in peer competition; we fear being judged; we have weak attention spans co-opted by smart phones (“magic power devices” in KP-speak), computer screens, texts, TV—so we are reactive, not proactive (Gordon, interview).

Regarding our inability to listen for long, he called the prompts we’d been given for writing assignments in high school can’t-fail, paint-by-number exercises that eliminated thoughtful responses in favor of predictable mediocrity. He delivered to us what service providers at Hofstra had delivered to him: We, having had no experience out of our homeostasis, could not make use of the university’s resources that we had already paid for (Gordon, class discussion). Hence, our first prompts, though activity-driven—a) convince the class that one’s peer interviewee is an asset to us; b) experience a service at Hofstra, interview the service provider and convince us to participate in the service—came with no written instructions. As one of our best writers put it, “At first I was frustrated with a lack of direction because growing up all we had was a sheet of paper with an assignment and we stuck to that, but with KP I discovered that there is more room to express ourselves freely without fear of being greatly penalized in our work. Not only does it allow for creative freedom, but it removes the stress from writing essays” (Solis). Ironically, his encouragement of our transcending convention rather than enforcing it granted greater capacity to express, as well as to entertain, new ideas.

He talked ideas often and he increased my attention span with his animated commentaries: a combination of playful asides and cliff-hanging transitions, puns and double entendres, song lyrics and poem quotes, jazz and jailhouse slang, exclamations in other tongues. His rapid-fire delivery burst our little high school bubbles, but I sensed another motive more sinister than shock and awe. His trust-your-gut-&-let-go-into-the-flow convo style invited us to treat language as a tool for discovery rather than a restricting set of rules that kept us in our places. He also caused me to reconsider strategies for conveying a thesis as well as new ways to interpret data. As Sydney put it, “When he first starts talking, there is that doomed moment of total uncertainty about where he is going, but after slowly internalizing his diverse ramblings into a coherent whole, it turns out that his ideas can be applied with great benefit to most aspects of our college intellectual life” (Chesworth). 

Like he predicted, we did need one another—as study buddies, as readers of our journals, as peer reviewers and as writers capable of taking feedback—to repudiate the banking concept of education (Freire, 1) with a problem-posing method that engages us as peers. My heart opened while reading a blog post from his former student fresh from the Ivy League and a life-threatening coma who described KP “as being the weirdest person in the room in order to ensure that no one feels alienated by their fellow classmates” (Weiss, par. 3). His asking us to take him as he is meant that he wanted us to be ourselves and “quit frontin’.” Because of (or in spite of) his behavior, we learned to speak our minds and share notions that we may have otherwise rejected as below standard or out of orbit.

In essence, his wide-angle, learn-by-doing method suggests that we create room for all the possibilities, including the non-rational, intuitional and oddball notion. This involves an attitude adjustment about making mistakes or getting judged and leads to a more dynamic exchange of ideas. We students are allies to each other rather than aliens and one another’s greatest resource; the success of our peers is not a threat to our achievement within the class. Intellectual growth of those around us only encourages and evokes development within our expanding minds. Learning of the upmost importance occurs within our one-on-one experience, and it is the heart-to-heart, eye-to-eye conversations with our equals that provide us with life lessons that will extend further beyond our schooling years. Developing close interpersonal relationships facilitates the improvement of our skills as writers and thinkers. As a service to one another, KP asks us to critique the work our peers have presented and to offer praise when praise is due as well as offer solutions to what is problematically expressed. Not only must one be honest and tactful but also be willing to change one’s mind without fear of failure, which is particularly relevant because, preceding our university experience, we were tricked into becoming slightly different versions of the ideal student in order to get accepted by our dream college. We lost our individuality without any recognition of it even happening. Now that we have become acutely aware of this loss, we must regain the original and unafraid voices that we rightfully possess.

Nothing has stimulated this unlearning/re-learning process for me like discussions following reading assignments. From the parable of the Chinese farmer to the Gestalt vase/facial profile image, from Chuang Tzu’s butterfly dream to Lawrence Kohlberg’s levels of moral development, from Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” to Alan Watts’ The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” to John Smitanka’s “A Reflection on the Purpose of Higher Education,” from Gloria Anzaldua’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” to Susan Faludi’s Backlash, from Malcolm X’s “The Ballot ot the Bullet” to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and Thomas Frank’s eye to contemporary university life alongside Roksa and Arum’s “Life after College,” I better sense reality’s multi-dimensional threshold. Talks about Taoism, Buddhism and other meditation-driven philosophies have inspired me to research ideas that had previously seemed bizarre, but I can now confidently say I identify with.

Having grown up in a strict, conservative household where I was constantly spoon-fed beliefs that I had to follow, I wouldn’t have even thought to reach beyond the Roman Catholic, predetermined, obedience-driven mold bestowed upon me. When I thought of school or church, it was the image of a machine filing in students and turning them out as plastic, uniformly faced learners from the music video by Pink Floyd, accompanied by the words: “We don’t need no thought control … all and all, you’re just another brick in the wall” (Pink Floyd). Now, for the first time in my educational career, my point of view is not limited by my mother’s fear-based, overbearing restrictions. I have expanded my ways of thinking and have been met with enthusiasm by my classmates. Having intellectually grown as an individual due to this inimitable character, I now understand what was meant by the comment: “With KP, you will do more than just learn” (Anonymous). 

Works Cited 

Anonymous. “Paul K. Gordon at Hofstra University – RateMyProfessors.com.” N.p., 25 May     2015. Web. 28 Oct. 2015.

Chesworth, Sydney. Personal interview. 27 Oct. 2015.

Freire, Paulo. “The Banking Concept of Education.” thinkingtogether.org. 4 Feb. 2004. Web. 5 Sep. 2015.

Gordon, Paul Kirpal. Class discussion. 3 Sep. 2015.

Gordon, Paul Kirpal. Personal interview. 6 Oct. 2015.

Pink Floyd. “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2).” The Wall. 1979. CD.

Solis, Lola. Personal interview. 27 Oct. 2015.

Weiss, Jared, “The Power of Belief,” Taking Giant Steps Blog, 23 Nov. 2015.

The Power of Belief by Jared Weiss



 

Have you ever heard anyone say, “Oh, I’m glad I thought small?,” because I’m sure I haven’t. Coming into Hofstra University's WSC 1 Composition course, without even realizing it, my perception of my peers was quite provincial. This class taught me not to underestimate the value of anyone and not to sell anyone short, including myself. From the interviewing process, to the essay on college admissions, the essay on identity, running the gamut to all of the bolts and screws upon which this class operated, I received a head-on experience of ex ducare. Kobe Bryant once said, “The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great in whatever they want to do,” and that’s what this class did for me.

The first time I realized that there was more to this class than is derived from the course title was during my interview with Ian. Upon first glance, he seemed like an average student, but there was so much more behind those glasses of his. To maintain his privacy, I will only tell you a bit of what I learned. First, he had gone through hardships, which occurred from circumstances beyond his control, but these really sparked a fire in him, causing him to start working harder than ever before. Moreover, he is very serious, yet compassionate, as I was able to discover from talking to him for twenty minutes.

I became even more shell-shocked as I heard the other essays, which made me realize how diverse each of us was and what experiences each brought with them. Coming from a high school that basically kept everyone living in a tiny bubble, being at Cornell University for only three weeks, and then suffering through a traumatic illness, I wasn’t really sure what to expect or how everyone would react to me. The illness started last fall with a severe pneumonia in one of my lungs after being misdiagnosed with the flu. I was placed into a medically induced coma for two days and put on a ventilator and feeding tube. After this, I had an autoimmune response to the infection, so my body produced too many antibodies which blocked certain receptors in my brain and caused my body to have these odd movements; I couldn’t walk or talk at all at first. I was in  four different hospitals for a total of six weeks, but thankfully the doctor at the second hospital was an unbelievable person who figured out everything right away and placed me on high doses of steroids over the next few months. I also had to go through numerous therapies and had post-traumatic stress disorder, which was treated by a psychologist. In addition, I had to re-learn how to do basically everything that I had been capable of prior to the illness. Consequently, I was more than pleased with the results of the class: KP and all of the students made me feel like I belonged, and that was more than I could have asked for.

The class structure was definitely suitable for facilitating this environment of openness. From Day One, we students had to move our chairs into a circle, including the professor. This was a huge change from high school where students sit behind the teacher who acts as the master while we take information into our short-term memories and then spit it all back on the tests, otherwise known as the banking concept of education (Friere). If I didn’t know any better from the problem-posing model of education, I would say that the school hierarchy system is really messed up. However, in this class the professor was seen as our coach, who helped to make all of our impulses work in one cohesive unit rather than a bunch of individual parts. The typical model of teaching leads to ruthless competition as to who can be the best at regurgitating information. On the other hand, the paradigm for this class led to cooperation.

“After the fellow answered a particularly odd question, something about a mountain in Argentina, my host looked at me and said, ‘How much do you think I’d pay that guy to work for me?’ ‘How much?’ I asked. ‘Not a cent over $300---not per week, not per month, but for life.' I’ve sized him up. That expert can’t think”(Shwartz). This reminded me of “Life After College: The Challenging Transitions of the Academically Adrift Cohort"  by Roska and Arum whose research revealed, “Those who can’t critically think will be living with their parents their whole lives.”  This course taught me that it’s not about how many facts you know that can be looked up on Google nowadays, but it’s more about how well you can think for yourself.

Moreover, another helpful technique that made this class what it was involved reading each other’s essays and all of our multiple drafts prior to handing them in. This allowed for each draft to develop and become stronger, until it was our best piece of work. In addition to each student reading our drafts, KP, unlike any high school teacher, actually read through each of our essays in detail. Everything we handed to him was scrutinized and marked up very carefully in a way that we could use his corrections to improve our next essay. I know for a fact that he read everything carefully by the way he was able to size us up so accurately just based on our autobiographies. For instance, right away he knew that I was a baller, and a guy who wouldn’t quit in sports or in life. This shows dedication on the part of the teacher, really taking the time to get to know the students. I think that this rubbed off on each of us as we modeled this behavior and took the time to realize how much bigger the class really was. I don’t just mean the size of it, but I’m talking about the scope of experience and knowledge that was brought to the class. KP taught us that as weird as we are, he’s weirder, and that whatever we thought would disqualify us from being an asset to the class actually qualified us. This allowed us to show our true colors and to be ourselves despite what many of us had been told in past classes.

Going along with the idea of finding ourselves through writing was the essay on identity, which happened to be our fourth assignment, after we had learned what defines a person. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.” Our true identity cannot be restricted or taken away by anyone and we must realize that no one is above and beyond anyone else, only in mindset. Kobe Bryant also said, “I don’t want to be the next Michael Jordan; I only want to be Kobe Bryant.”

There is nothing empowering about being someone you are not just to get people to like you. It took tons of reading to realize that colleges are playing games on us. In other words, they drive you to portray the image of someone you are not, just so you can get into college. Wait, but I thought that the point of college was to help you discover who you are and what you want to be? This is where the lie is located. We’ve been taught throughout school up to this point that you have to be the quintessential student just to have a chance with college admissions. After learning what I have from this class, I realize that I would rather just be me, because that is the best thing I can be. We as humans tend to have approval addiction, in which all we want is for everyone to love us and clap for us in every action that we take. He who attempts to please everyone pleases no one. So why should I care what anyone else thinks about me? I am my own person so, if I say I’m going to do something, then I’ll do it. This is one of the parts, however, where I slightly veer off in viewpoint from what KP tried to show us. I feel that in order to get to where you want to go, sometimes it is necessary to step on other people’s feet. This is just what I’ve gleaned from reading biographies on NBA greats Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. Also, before you can worry about anyone else, you must first worry about yourself. To that end, by thinking bigger for yourself, you indirectly give others the power to do the same for themselves. For instance, it doesn’t come natural for me to get in the way of others, but in the case of my Cornell basketball tryout, I knew what I had to do and from the time the tryout started nobody could get in my way. Typically, I like to give other people more shots than myself; however, I realized that I needed to shoot the ball more than usual just to be seen.



One of the activities that allowed me to see the power of expanding my thought horizons and really engaged my interest in what KP was trying to show us was the vase or the facial profiles activity. After much discussion as to whether this picture that he showed us was the profiles or a vase, KP told us that it was “both and neither.” This relates to everything that we see in our daily lives. Don’t judge something in absolute terms, but instead open your mind up to objectivity and say to yourself, “Maybe there are more dimensions to this than I first saw.” Humans are especially quick to judge other humans because this helps the mind to place people in categories. This is what creates stereotypes, and when someone comes up who doesn’t fit a particular category, the mind does something known as sub-typing in order to place the exception. However, if you keep an open mind and say that a person is “both and neither” the picture you had originally thought, then you have achieved a clearer state of mind.

One more thing that this course taught me was that it’s not about the grade you receive but rather, did you grow as a result? If I must answer the question as to what grade I should receive, my answer would be an A+. Why should I think anything else? That would be selling myself short. I consider myself an A+ thinker, an A+ person, who always gives an A+ effort, so that is what I think I deserve and have rightfully earned. Moreover, I saw a gradual improvement from essay to essay and was able to feel myself developing my own distinct voice. It had been demonstrated by papers and tests in my prior levels of education that I shouldn’t think for myself and I should reflect the work and thoughts of the teacher.  This course, however, strengthened my own opinions and allowed me to bring them out in the best way that I could, not the best way some stuck-up, test-driven, banking concept teacher told me to think. This class took me away from the conventional learning and allowed me to see the presence of alternative and more effective models of teaching.

 “Afterwards, the salesperson said to another, ‘I’m not going to let a $1.98 customer take up all my time and make me take the store apart trying to find him what he wants. He’s simply not worth it’” (Shwartz). This was essentially the attitude that I think most of us had coming into this class, that everyone else was just a “$1.98” person who had nothing more to offer. Leaving this class, I see that every human being has so much to offer, so everyone is essentially priceless. If nothing else, I learned to not sell anyone short of their potential, and have realized that there is so much more to life than just the “vases” or just the “facial profiles.”

 

It's now six months since I wrote this essay. After a great summer of rehab, I'm stronger physically than ever and am on both college talent-level basketball and soccer teams. I do a cross fit regime 4-5 days a week and can jump 34 inches at the moment. Although my speech isn't all better, it's still improving. Also, I'm taking classes at NYU this semester but not sure what I will do next semester.

           

Works Cited

Freire, Paulo. "The 'Banking' Concept of Education." http://www.pitt.edu/~writecen/BankingConcept.pdf

King Jr., Martin Luther. “Letter From Birmingham Jail.” African Studies Center at UPENN. 16 Apr. 1963.

Schwartz, David J. “The Magic of Thinking Big.” Book. 1959.

Roska, Josipa. Arum, Richard. “Life After College: The Challenging Transitions of the Academically Adrift Cohort." Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning. July-August 2012.

"Kobe Bryant." BrainyQuote.com. Xplore Inc. 13 May 2015. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/k/kobebryant574704.html