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Graduate School, Part One

Once spring 1993 arrived I was a full-time student again commuting from Cape May to Glassboro.

The very first thing I ever taught was my adult classmates how to make an origami butterfly. Each of us was assigned/selected a topic. I spent a week or two (whatever amount of time we were provided) practicing in a bar. Each night after work (I was waiting tables at the time) we would go out for cocktails. I’d take a stack and practice. I then began teaching my friends how to make these. I then created a board with each step and successfully taught my peers. Pretty cool.

Olivet School
I took classes through the summer. My first in-classroom experience was at the Olivet School in Pittsgrove. I was teamed with another graduate student, Mike from Atlantic City. We we assigned to a first grade class. I really enjoyed the experience.

I recall teaching the students the number nine. We used a balloon on a stick to model. I also recall making a bulletin board with a tree. I have little artistic talent, but I was Renoir compared to Mike. His tree was dreadful.

Wood School
After leaving Pittsgrove, Mike and I headed over to the Wood School in Millville.

Johnstone School
My student teaching experience was in a third grade class at the Johnstone School in Vineland.

That summer I completed my thesis The Effects of Multimedia On Student Writing. Interestingly, I entered Glassboro State College, but was graduated from Rowan University.

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Post-Boston

Defeated, I found myself once again in my parents’ home in New Jersey. I had to admit to myself that my way hadn’t worked. But rather than beat myself up over all that had gone wrong, I have always felt proud of how I reacted. I decided to start making decisions that were in my best interests. Some never understood that for the previous few years, my decisions were being made with someone else in mind.

The first thing I came to terms with is that as much as I would enjoy going through the CIA, I had no desire to remain in the restaurant industry. That was an easy decision, what was not easy was determining what I would do instead.

I had at one time fancied myself a university professor of philosophy. I kept looking at PhD. programs. All required a foreign language. At 26 I had learned a little about myself by then and I knew picking up a language was not going to happen. My friend Steve had found his way to elementary teaching and he loved it. In addition, he mentioned how starved for male teachers schools were.

I began researching and there was a program at Glassboro that would be perfect for me. I was too late to enroll in the first year of the MST program, so I set my sights on spring of 1993 to enroll.

That meant I had nearly 18 months … what to do?

I worked and I learned computers. My folks were the local computer experts and I spent my days learning. At night I built systems with my father. During the day I learned software from my mother. It was the best of both worlds. I was on the RIME network and a couple others. This was pre-Internet, as we know it today.

Being an adult living with your folks is not ideal for anyone. I decided to head to Florida to live with my grandmother for a bit and work. I figured I could pocket a good deal of cash for graduate school.

I was wrong. I worked at a seafood restaurant in Dunedin called Jesse’s Dockside. They were so overstaffed money was hard to make. On occasion there was a good payday, but not usually. I looked around and found a high-end placed named Bentley’s. I changed jobs. It was a mistake. While Bentley’s was an awesome place, it could not draw enough customers as it was so high priced. We did tableside service and I learned how to make Caesar salad from scratch, Bananas Foster, Baked Alaska, etc. Money flowed no better here. My grandmother had a stroke and it seemed prudent to get out of the way, so right after Christmas I returned to New Jersey.

Soon enough spring came and I became a student once again.

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Boston

After college, my plans were not firm. I had a job managing the Mad Batter restaurant in my hometown of Cape May. I began commuting between Muhlenberg and home in the late winter of my senior year. I worked all summer. It was very much like any other year. But as the summer wore on, my parents began to ask what I was going to do come September. Work, I thought. It was their intention to have me move out.

As I pondered spending money to live in a town that I had never had to spend a dime on for board I realized that it was time to move on. I had stumbled into a relationship with a girl I knew from college. She was moving to Boston to attend Northeastern for graduate school and suggested I move in with her. It seemed serendipitous at the time.

Union Square
I drove all night late in September, my little car packed full. I recall arriving about 7:00 a.m. at my new abode. Instead of just my girlfriend, there was another girl I knew from college living there. Sigh …

Without a bed, I slept on an air mattress and searched for a job. Coming from a nouveau cuisine restaurant, I thought I’d walk into a high end restaurant. No dice. It wasn’t long before I recognized the reality of needing a job. I signed on as the manager of a Tony Roma’s restaurant in a suburb of the city.

Boston was off to a rough start: my living situation was less than ideal, I received two traffic tickets in my first two weeks, and we were robbed.

The restaurant was a franchise owned by John Battaglino. Minority shares of the restaurant were owned by Bobby Orr and KC Jones. We hosted many fundraisers for the Celtics and the Bruins. But it was difficult working here. The restaurant was not supposed to make money; it was a write-off for Battaglino and used as a liquor store for friends and family.

Oak Square
As the relationship with the girl I had moved to the city for failed, I found myself needing to find a new abode. At the same time, my friend Steve had returned from London and decided to move to Boston. We got an apartment together in Oak Square, about a mile down the road from where I was living.

This was absolutely the worst move of my life. Being so close, I figured I didn’t need to pack too securely. Bah! I recall driving down Cambridge Street with my mattresses on the roof (I had since purchased a bed) my hand holding them up so they wouldn’t fall off.

We had a nice apartment and entertained quite a bit. We rented our furniture and while it was expensive, it was nice stuff. It was while living here I began dating another girl from college. The only issue was that she lived in Bermuda.

I eventually left Roma’s to manage Hunter’s restaurant at 885 Boyleston Street in the heart of Boston. Hunter’s also owned the Pour House down the street. I came on as new management took over the joint. These folks were exiles from the Newbury Street TGI Fridays. This was the signature store at the time. I stayed here about four months before I returned to Roma’s.

Much of what was wrong with Roma’s had supposedly been corrected. I was asked to return and I did. That lasted several months before things changed again. This was the turn that eventually had JLB sell the franchise. Orr and Jones had left, along with all their trophies. I found myself without a job in the summer of ‘89.

Papa Gino’s
Being out of work when you’re young is not quite as bad as when you’re older. I traveled to North Carolina to visit friends, took road trips to see Grateful Dead shows, and had a momentous journey to Montreal for the Amnesty International concert. During this time I worked under the table at a restaurant somewhere (Sudbury?) with Sara. That kept some cash flowing, but things were not great.

We moved in with Sara and Bill in a gorgeous condo in Chlemsford. The lease was up in January 1990. We all found an apartment in Watertown. It was a duplex. Nothing great but fine. It had a puke green rug in the living room. I was very hesitant renting this place. We pulled up the corner of the rug and found a beautiful hardwood floor beneath. We re-did that floor the week before we moved in. I have never worked harder in my life. The landlord was so grateful he treated us to a $100 dinner on the wharf.

I also sucked it up that I needed to work. I joined Papa Gino’s, swallowing my pride as I did so. It didn’t take a genius to see I had gone from a state-of-the-art restaurant to a glorified fast food joint in the span of a few years. I was not happy about it. The Polyester pants I had to wear were the icing on the cake.

Many plans were hatched during this time: move to London, move to Bermuda, get married, enter the CIA, etc. Push eventually came to shove and plans were cemented. I was going to leave Boston, enter the Culinary Institute of America, and then get married.

But a funny thing happened along the way. Sara and Bill got married, my fiancée moved back to Bermuda, and I moved to Burlington. The plans were still on, but looking back, it certainly seemed like the writing was on the wall. Right as I was finishing up in Boston in 1991, I traveled to Bermuda for Cup Match. During that two week stay we broke up. So I headed back to New Jersey broke, broken up, and contemplating being in the restaurant industry for the rest of my life. It is not what I what I had intended …

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Muhlenberg College

I attended Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA. I had many majors during my four years. Originally I was an accounting major. This was influenced by my sister’s degree. I changed this after my Intro to Accounting class. I earned As in the class, but I was bored silly. I could not imagine doing that for a living.

I was an Art major one semester so I could take a Three-Dimensional Design class that was only available to art majors. Those who know me understand just how silly this sounds.

In the end, I graduated as a double major: Business Administration and Philosophy.

I was an East Dorm Rat for all four years. Few students live in those hallowed halls for four years.

ZBT was the fraternity I pledged. I dropped out when I realized that after a year, all my friends would have graduated. This was an ongoing theme at the ‘Berg; all my friends were upperclassmen. I knew so few folks in my own class I spent graduation week (including graduation) in Maine and Boston.

During this time I attended my first Grateful Dead shows, had more surgery on my ears, and drove my first car (a Mazda 323).

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St. Andrew’s School

When I looked at St. Andrew’s School, everything was different. It was a splendid day and the sun glistened off the pond. The school was no more handicapped accessible than Lawrenceville, but the staff bent over backwards to make my father comfortable. The school was smaller, but had girls, and to this 14-year-old, that was something. The decision was left to me and I selected the lesser known school.

After all that it would be perfect to say how much I enjoyed it. Much like my childhood, it was much more appreciated after I left. It’s not that I didn’t like it when I was there, but I was a teenager struggling with my identity. Living at a school where my classmates flew in on their private Learjets, I think it’s safe to say I struggled with my identity. But who didn’t?

Seeing as soccer was the wrong sport at Wildwood Catholic, I opted to run cross country here. That was the wrong sport here and I was once again on the “loser” team. I played basketball and squash during the winters. I did not play a sport in the spring. My love of baseball was on hiatus for a few years.

I met three lifelong friends here. Bentley was a roommate for part of one year. He, Steve, and Andrew all spent summers in Cape May with me over the years. Steve and I lived together in Boston for a year and a half after college.

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