I look back and see the kids who made it through school - it made a huge difference in their lives, which made me believe in the power of public education and what it can do for individuals and communities and the state.
I have no idea, actually, where I fit in, in terms of poetry camps. At AWP conferences, I have been on panels about humor, collaboration, visual poetry, confessional poetry, gender, and the body, as well as tributes to Edward Field and Albert Goldbarth. I felt at home on all of them - most poets straddle more than one school.
I went to school with Steven Wright who was the shyest guy I knew, and one day someone suddenly told me that he was in a club doing standup comedy. I went down to his club and he was great. Another friend of mine, who was pretty much a thief by trade, was hosting the show. So I thought if these guys can do it then so can I.
I studied acting in school and then of course couldn't get an acting job.
I wanted to be a hockey player. Where I grew up, the basketball courts were rarely used. I was terrible in school and actually said, 'I'm going to be a hockey player.'
If you think about portraying Americans, for example, in a Russian film, it all depends on where the American is from, if they went to school or not, and if they're well-educated or not. Is it an American from Texas, or an American from Brooklyn? Things would change with the vocabulary and the accent.
I still had a normal childhood with my friends from school.
I love Steven Wright. I was in high school in the '80s, and there was a lot of stand up on television.
I thought I would, you know, go to college, get to law school, finish, and then get a job and work as a lawyer, but that proved to be not a good fit for me.
I went to law school. I found it interesting for the first three weeks.
When I was in high school I experimented sexually. The experiment was to never have sex with anybody no matter how hard I tried. Success! Hypothesis confirmed.
I cheated at school. I remember on one occasion I wrote some history dates in pen on my leg. So when there was a question like 'What year did that happen?', I'd lift my skirt up and have a look.
I went to medical school because I wanted to ask the big questions. Do we have a soul? Does God exist? What happens after death?
When I was growing up, I went to an Irish-Christian missionary school.
School of Rock. The best music school anywhere. This whole idea of getting kids not just taking lessons and learning notes and chords, but learning songs and playing with other young musicians, and getting out on stage... I was so impressed that my daughter Cheyenne goes to School of Rock on Long Island.
I was interviewed by the Moscow Times and they said how's it feel to know that every Russian school child has to read your Teenage Survival Guide? I said slightly terrifying.
There are people in the public sector with a range of experiences that have no equivalent in business, but are essential to governing, like keeping a kid in school or helping someone get and hold a job. The value of those skills can't easily be measured against a bottom line.
I remember the old joke, while women are deciding which schools the kids go to, where you're going to live, how the money's going to be spent, and where your health care is coming from, the men are out standing around the barbecue solving all the big world problems. So I think this is a well known fact and we're not breaking any new ground here.
There's still sexism in the world, so there's still sexism in publishing and in graduate school. But it is different. Now, it's more coded and harder to detect. It was more explicit when I was in school. There were no rules against male professors asking out female students. The reverse didn't happen since female professors were rare or nonexistent. Visiting writers came, 90% of them male, and some expected that a female student would materialize as his date for the visit.
So my son is very curious, which is fantastic. He loves school. So I don't have to encourage him too much, but I love to do it because I know it's meaningful and words are powerful.
My parents always made education and school the number one priority. They believed that an education is the best gift you can give to your child.
I'm always impressed that as we go through life most of the stuff we do doesn't matter that much, at least not ostensibly: you go to the grocery store, you work, you go to school. If any of that were omitted, most days, it wouldn't matter much.
I teach Korean translation at the British Centre for Literary Translation summer school, so I see an emerging generation too, who are around my age. I'm hoping to find time to mentor, and to help emerging translators to a first contract through Tilted Axis.
I've got this thing with skating and school - to see how much I can accomplish.
I hope I give girls an opportunity to realize that they can swim and go to school at the same time. It's not to be given up once they get out of high school. They can continue doing it for the rest of their lives.
