SEEDS SCHOLARS PROGRAM ’94 | KENT PLACE SCHOOL ’98 | VASSAR COLLEGE ’02 | NEW YORK UNIVERSITY ’10
Before SEEDS came into my life, I was kind of all over the place. I started my education journey in the Newark public school system, which I loved because my teachers were always so encouraging. However, the work wasn’t very challenging, and so after finishing second grade, my granddad sprung for tuition for Catholic school, and I enrolled in Blessed Sacrament. There, I was challenged and still excelling, but after three years, we couldn’t afford the tuition and I found myself back at public school for 6th grade. I attended a magnet school for 7th and 8th grades, where, if I’m being honest, I got by on mostly charm – except for Science and Latin, which I geeked out on so hard.
Prior to beginning 9th grade, my science teacher Mr. Moore recommended that I apply to a program called SEEDS. I will always remember him for that, and I hope he’s doing alright now.
Applying to SEEDS was such an important thing for me for all the obvious academic reasons, sure, but also because my family life was pretty stressful. As a child, I was unofficially adopted by a family friend, my Ma, when my biological parents proved too reckless and irresponsible. She was the type who took in kids the way other women take in stray cats because her heart was just that big.
Unfortunately, her budget wasn’t as big as her heart, so while she was out working two to three jobs to support a small army of children, I had to stay home from school to take care of the kids who were younger than I was. I missed a lot of school, like a I-have-no-idea-how-I-managed-to-pass-7th-or-8th-grade a lot. And I could see this was going to hurt me in the future, even at 12, so I applied to SEEDS and to whatever independent schools looked promising enough. If it weren’t for my 8th-grade guidance counselor, Ms. Noble, and the persistent leadership at SEEDS, I never would’ve known that I’d gotten into the final phase of SEEDS or into several independent schools. My Ma was hiding the mail. I found it hidden inside her nightstand much later after I’d already enrolled at Kent Place. She was proud of me but did not want me to go.
Being a part of SEEDS taught me an incredibly important lesson – that anyone, with enough encouragement, can achieve.
After graduating from SEEDS, I attended Kent Place School in Summit New Jersey. Aside from wanting more for myself academically, I was also interested in independent school out of sheer curiosity. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about and to find out if wealthy kids were really learning more than us – the not-so-wealthy. The answer: they absolutely were, and the inequity of that is infuriating.
At Kent Place School, I went from being the smartest kid in public school to feeling like the dumbest in private school. I don’t think I ever had to work so hard for Cs in my life. And my little ego was bruised for a while until I got to college and had a professor suggest that I become a tutor. So, I may not have gone to Kent Place School knowing everything, but I did exactly what I was supposed to do: learn. Socially, I remained a floater, tried to stay open to all kinds of people and experiences— my very first concert was Metallica, for crying out loud. My peers, for the most part, were cool. Even if their parents were prejudiced nightmares. I almost got expelled from Kent Place because a parent insisted that I was on drugs at a school dance when, in reality, I was probably the straightest-edge kid in the joint.
SEEDS really opened up a lot of doors for me, and I don’t even want to imagine how different my life would have turned out without it.
My advice to those who now follow in my footsteps is this: It’s going to feel like you’re just swinging from vine to vine for a little while— wild and unpredictable and harrowing at times— but you’re going to land someplace really cool and when you look back, you’re going to see how resourceful and resilient you actually are. And have always been.