Mais le Sort a Voulu

As I sat at my desk typing up the final composition for French class (in English, to be put through an English-to-French translator later), it struck me that this was most likely the last French-related work I would ever do. Once I would finish this paper and submit it, I’d be done with my French class for this quarter, my last French class ever, thus making me forever done with French.

I hated French so much this quarter. The grammar assignments were tedious, the readings unstimulating, and every minute of class so long and overwhelming, the teacher seeming to never take a breath between her long sentences, which were loaded with prepositions after prepositions. But now that it’s all coming crashing to an end—this class plus a part of the last four years of my life—I can’t help but feel some kind of woe, dually characterized by regret and a sense of loss.

The regret comes from me beating myself over the head and repeatedly asking, “Why didn’t I fucking take Spanish instead?” French is useless. Well, it can be useful for some, but for me? A guy who plans on teaching in California, specifically in San Jose, which has many areas where Mexicans/Latinos/Hispanics/Chicanos/Spanish speakers here make up more than half the population?

Teaching two summers at Breakthrough has especially reinforced my remorse, as I feel like there were some students who I could not break the language barrier with. Hell, even Vietnamese would’ve been more useful than French. I think like ten percent of Breakthrough students were Vietnamese. Guess the percentage of French speakers? Zero. Guess the percentage of French speakers in a normal high school in San Jose? Probably so insignificant that my resume would get tossed in the shredder for listing only French as my other “fluent” foreign language.

However, no matter how much I try to convince myself that French was a waste of time, I still can’t help but lament this language. As I’ve probably mentioned earlier, I’m losing more than just a language.

I’m losing a sense of direction. I may know what I’m switching my major to at the end of this year, but it doesn’t really smoothly translate into a subject that I can teach in high school. So what am I going to teach? I can’t spend hours in the shower coming up with lesson plans in my head like I did with French.

I’m losing a love. I thought French was totally for me, but I guess it was really never meant to be (pfft, as if anything’s really meant to be).

I’m losing a sense of individualism. I felt so cool to be that one Asian guy who went around proclaiming to be a French major instead of Bio Science like all the other losers. (Well, this sense of individualism died a long time ago.)

And, I’m losing a sense of pride.

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“Five Minutes”
Written May 30th, 2008 (Excerpted)

As for French, I and the rest of French 4 have to create a video of this novel that we read, D’Artagnan (a shorter 100-something-paged version, not the actual 500-paged brick). This video is to be at least forty minutes long. French 3 is going to watch it, and then they’re going to take a quiz on it. How well French 4 communicated the message of the novel and how well French 3 does on the quiz is all going to factor into our grade. I hate this fucking project. It is bullshit.

Now, normally, I enjoy all things French. I enjoyed the AP French test, for example. However, I do NOT enjoy this project, and in fact, I do NOT enjoy this class. Why? All year long in French 4, we had to do projects and present them to French 3 so that they would understand it. In case you don’t understand how “levels” in a subject area work, 3 is less than 4, so therefore, French 3 knows less shit than French 4. In all of our French 4 projects, we have to throw away everything we learn in French 4 and use French 3 structures and vocabulary. And hell, as for D’Artagnan, my group is assuming that French 3 is not as smart as they’re supposed to be (and I actually think they might not be sometimes) and we’re dropping down our vocab and structures to a French 2 level. I don’t get to use ANYTHING I have spent so much time on learning and mastering in the last year, including shit that Madame even taught us. Simple shit like, “I want you to tell me what you now” (“Je veux que vous me disiez ce que vous savez”), becomes even simpler shit like, “What do you know? I want to know. Tell me. (“Que savez-vous? Je veux savoir. Dites-moi.”) What’s the point of learning all this shit from Madame if we’re not actually going to practice with it?

Ironically enough though, at Honor Night last night, I was rewarded “Most Outstanding” in the “language other than English” department. I thought that I might have annoyed Madame too much by arguing with her whenever she’s wrong about French grammar, but I guess she still liked me enough to single-handedly beat down four or five other Spanish teachers to have her one French student win the award.
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I think I might be acting a little overdramatic because in reality, on Thursday, the last day of French, I walked out the door screaming, “FUCK YEAH!” But that was because all these realizations hadn’t struck me yet.

Although I’ll probably wake up some time next week and think to myself once again, “FUCK YEAH!”

Well, it’s not quite over yet. There’s one more thing on the list that I need to do, and it’s probably the hardest part: Tell my parents.

Validation

It’s 6 AM, and I’m sitting in front of my laptop eating a Hot Pocket and typing this blog. About eight hours ago, I performed my final audition for this quarter. On Wednesday, I’m going to celebrate the end of audition season by cooking a home-made Asian dinner for my friends and me.

I’ve sacrificed a lot for dancing. I’ve used time I should’ve spent visiting my relatives or calling my parents to dance instead. I’ve put off my school work so much that I’m sure this quarter I will get the worst grades I’ve ever gotten in college. I’ve gotten others—well, just Trung—to sacrifice his time and rent a car to drive down to Irvine and watch both my CADC and MCIA auditions. And don’t get me started on the money, the hundreds of dollars I’ve dropped.

There was a time when I used to question whether or not it’s been worth all the sacrifices. And there was a time when, in order to figure out if it’s been “worth it,” I’d seek validation—validation through the form of approval from others, or the pros: getting chosen for select groups or getting onto a dance crew.

Well, none of that has happened. So at this rate, you’d think that I’d just be about ready to quit, or slit my throat. But after watching the video of my performances tonight and comparing it to my old dancing shit, I can say that even though I wasn’t the best out of everyone at the MCIA auditions and even though my group was pretty sloppy as a whole (though I was better than a good amount of people), I’ve fucking grown, and it’s just so much more apparent now. I’m at this point where I’ve realized that validation from others isn’t what makes all these sacrifices worth it.

The only validation I need, and the best form there is, is from myself. And it doesn’t come from just seeing myself improve, but also from knowing that I’m loving what I do, so much that I continue to make sacrifices for it. I have that validation now. I’m happy with my progress as a dancer. Considering what I was writing two months ago, this is the ultimate accomplishment, the one that I truly should’ve been seeking in the first place.

Driven

I went to San Francisco today for a class. Got to see some S.I. kids and Funksters for the last time: Isaiah, Crystal, Masato, Jesyca, Tin, Jacqueline.

I was feeling pretty emotional, even if it wasn’t obvious. Then I found out that Tin went to class today just to say bye to me, and so did Isaiah. So that’s just like—I dunno—this makes me feel even more affected, touched, whatever.

Okay, with all attempts at trying to sound masculine and tough aside, I will say that today meant a lot and I will indeed miss the fuck out of all who I met this summer.

I’ll be back for classes in December.



I’m really excited for the school year, and I’m as equally nervous, mainly because auditions are going to come up fast and I question whether or not I’m ready. Frankly, I know I’m not, and whether or not I can kill it at auditions is dependent on luck. I’ve already accepted that I still need a year to train before I can get into a team.

After class, the executive artistic director of Funkanometry, Emerson, was giving some hugs to people as they left. Honestly, he scares me a little, and I was a little surprised when he prompted me to give him a hug too. (Of course it wasn’t like a full out warm hug.) He then said, “You’re going to Irvine, right?” That surprised me even more because I didn’t think he knew me as anyone except the guy who really butchered his piece (Obsessed) at the Summer Intensive showcase, and I was sure he still didn’t know my name.

I said yeah, and then he asked me what teams I was trying out for. I told him, “Everything,” to which he told me quite bluntly, “You still need a lot of practice.” I felt like it was 50% advice, and 50% a sneaky way of telling me that I sucked.

Still, it was a little motivating. When I come back in December, I’ll prove myself (hopefully), and if not, I’ll at least show some tremendous improvement.

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“A Return to Normalcy”
Written June 13th, 2009 (Excerpted)
Later that night, after a Mike Song dance class, I had one last Pho run with my Kevin, Alfonso, and non-black John...After dinner, I drove us all back to UCI. As I was dropping off Alfonso, he gave me a corny but unusually empowering speech. Take a picture of this moment, here I am a noob, but compare, by the end of the summer, I’ll be a dope dancer. It went something like that. I’m really excited for this summer.
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K, so I’m not a dope dancer yet. Give me the fall, at least.

Alfonso actually texted me about a week ago about the Mainstacks audition video, and he told me that I “improved exponentially.” That was actually validating. Getting casted into Fire was validating until I de-validated it, but I haven’t found a way to do the same to Alfonso’s comment. It really meant a lot, especially since Alfonso knew me when I first started choreo.

People in the dance community are just all around amazing in general, and I can’t wait to be reunited in SoCal.

Antiphony

“Trung, look!” I pointed at my laptop monitor.

Trung jumped off my bed and treaded through the shoes, books, papers, clothes, and empty water bottles which were all littered across my dorm room floor.

X-files, seasons 8 and 9, were on sale for $20 each at bestbuy.com. With one month of school left, these two seasons would be enough to hold me over.

I offered Trung money so he could buy them for me with his credit card, but he left his credit card at UCLA. (Well, I don’t remember what the exact reason was. He just couldn’t do it then). So, we waited until Monday.

Unfortunately, the sale ended on Monday. Trung did, however, manage to find another seller that sold each season for $20, and he went ahead and ordered both of them.

I impatiently waited until the following weekend for the seasons to come. And when they did come, Trung and I couldn’t believe our eyes as I pulled them out of their packaging. X-Files, seasons 4 and 5. We were sent the wrong seasons.

Trung was in charge of writing the angry email to the seller, at least he was until I read over his angry email, which wasn’t very angry at all. There was no room for niceness in the email, so I added at the end something like, “I don’t want to sound rude, but I expect compensation for having to wait extra longer now.”

And when they did send us the right seasons, they sent a nice crisp five dollar bill with it. Good for In-N-Out.

When I talked to Trung about paying him back for the seasons, he said it was fine. He’d cover it.

Including seasons 8 and 9, Trung had overall bought half of the entire series for me, as a birthday present or random gifts.

It’s going to be hard to watch X-Files alone. It’s going to be hard to watch X-Files without thinking about Trung.

Our 20-month long relationship came to an end last night.

December 8th, 2007. August 26th, 2009.

35 Letters

On Friday, for my three twenty-five-minute eighth grade writing classes, I selected and printed out four entries from my old blog: the first one I ever wrote (December 2003), one from December 2007, and two from this past year.

“Writing isn’t always a form of torture that you put yourself through just because your teacher is forcing you to do it for a grade,” I told my classes. “I write for fun, and I’ve been doing it since the 8th grade. I’ve kept a blog about my life since December 2003, and I’ve written over one thousand entries since. It’s how I developed my love for writing.”

I introduced the four selected entries and passed out copies to them. Some were really adamant about getting certain ones, such as Christmas Carol. One of my students, Leandra, surprised me by grabbing the longest one, “God Loves You,” and separating herself from the rest of the students to lie on the floor and read it.

My students all liked the activity. Ironically on that last day class, my classes were all on their almost best behavior, as if to say, “Look, we’re nice! Please come back next year!”

A lot of students have asked me if I’m coming back to teach next summer. Seventh graders are hoping to get me as a teacher next year. Nigel wants me to come back so I can let him teach a day or two of breakdancing in dance class. A student from my Block C, to my surprise, plans on coming back next year for the ninth grade freshmen program and hopes that I’ll be teaching ninth grade.

It upsets them and me that I don’t have an answer yet.

On Saturday, Breakthrough had its celebration night for all students and their family. There were student work expos, student performances, speeches, songs, teacher performances, and a slideshow. It was all very powerful.

I had to put myself out there one more time, so in my speech to introduce my dance class’s performance, I delivered some very unfortunate news...



(For the record, I censored “shit” for “SHIP,” but I guess some students didn’t think so, as you can hear by the laughs.)

(Back to being off the record, I actually thought up of the idea of a fakeout early at the beginning of summer last year, but I never implemented it because it probably wouldn’t have been too appropriate for my co-dance teacher at the time’s African Jazz piece. Last night, I felt really satisfied to see the fakeout happen; it was a burning secret plan that I kept in the back of my head and told NO ONE about.)

After the fakeout, the actual dance started. (Unfortunately, teachers are not supposed to put pictures or videos of the students online or anywhere public due to liability issues. Child molesters or something, I guess.)

After the final performance from the teachers, which I almost cried doing, kids received their summerbooks and t-shirts. The night before, I had written letters to twenty-eight of my students to give to them at celebration night. I had originally planned for more, but I had to cut down to just my three blocks of writing, my crew, and my dancers. I handed out the letters to my students and I also made sure to write longer letters in the summer books of the students who I didn’t have time to write separate letters for.

Overall, in the last two days, I wrote about thirty-five substantial letters to the students. They weren’t just generic shit like, “You were a pleasure to know. Good luck this year in school. Brian.” I seriously wrote down everything (positive) that I thought about them, among a few other things, including some sappy and emotional stuff:

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You probably thought that I got pissed off at you a lot in class, and I did. But you know that I know that you are a sweet and hardworking girl. The effort you put in this class is amazing.
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I don’t teach you because you’re a seventh grader, but I know you’re an amazing student in class. Overall you’re so well rounded. I am so proud of you for going up on Celebration Night to give both a speech and to perform in the dance set.
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You’ve had my writing class for two summers now, and it’s been a pleasure to see how much you’ve grown. I still remember last summer when you were shouting things like ‘HIGH QUALITY’ in your squeaky voice, and now, look at you, with your deep gruff voice and aiming to get accepted into Bellarmine College Prep.
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You were an all-star student, but I still need to apologize. I know I failed you a few times this summer.
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Imma tell you ‘bout a man named Mendoza, Matty
Straight from the bay where we all git hyphy.
You wouldn’t think he be Mexican.
You be thinking he trippin.
Especially with his million near deaths,
You’d wonder how this boy still be kickin’.
Nonetheless Mista Mendoza is the best,
The best rockin’ most chill guy ever.
And you can all bet...
His friend Brian won’t ever forget ya.
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There are still three days of Breakthrough left, but the students won’t be there. It’s just wrap-up and evaluation crap. Tomorrow, it’s going to be heartbreaking to walk into my empty classroom, rearrange the empty chairs, erase the shout-outs and messages on my whiteboard, and hear nothing but silence ring through the halls.