The Movie Black Swan

I highly recommend the movie The Black Swan, starring Natalie Portman from Star Wars and Mila Kunis from That 70s Show.  The movie features Nina (Portman) as a ballerina with a prominent New York ballet company who is asked to dance the parts of the Queen Swan from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake and the evil Black Swan.  Nina has to transform herself from the graceful and beautiful White Swan to a dark, sadistic, and alluring Black Swan.  Here in lies the struggle, the movie portrays Nina as a timid, conservative prude that has the perfection of the White Swan down to an art, however as the Black Swan she fails to connect with the audience of her lust and passion because of her inability to "let go" of her control and obsession with perfection.  Without giving the movie away, it travels with Nina as she tackles her darkest demons in order to bring out that Black Swan within her.  Many times you think Nina is on the verge of her own sanity.  It is visually stunning, and if you are in dance the way I am, you are at the edge of your seat the entire time they are on stage.  The dance sequences are typically short put full of cinematography that makes you feel like you're right in the audience of the actual ballet.  I highly recommend seeing this movie, it's passionate, dark, gritty, and visually amazing.

Selecting the Students for ACE

ACE is a scholarship program, meaning not all the students who apply get in.  Out of the 400 students that apply every year, only about 180 are selected.  The students are selected based upon financial need and an essay that they are asked to write.  The program is not an academic based program, meaning we accept applications from any sophomore that applies regardless of high school GPA.  However, in order for the students to be taken into consideration they must acquire two letters of recommendations from current teachers.  Typically, if the students are not doing well in their high school classes, they will not be giving a good recommendation.  What we find is that the students who are serious about taking college classes while they are in high school are students with fairly good, to excellent GPA's.  Currently we have been accepting the new applications for the new cohort of 2011.  It took us four weeks to schedule and present to all the sophomores at 8 high schools in our footprint.  Out of those high schools, we handed out over 1000 ACE applications, and out of those we have received close to 400 applications.  Once we evaluate the applications and selected the fortunate few, the students will start the program the first summer semester in June at South Mountain Community College.

ACE Planning Events

This last month we planned for the following semester.  Aside from the classes that the students take, they also have to participate in workshops.  The workshops for the following semester are different for juniors and seniors.  Our juniors will continue to take the 7 Habits for Highly Effective Teems by Sean Covey which helps them manage their time and creat healthy habits in order to be successful in high school as well as with ACE Program.  In addition to the 7 Habits Workshop, the junior males also participate in the 6 Most Important Decisions, also by Covey, which helps our young men make right choices and take ownership of those choices.  Our seniors will be taking workshops to understand and apply for FAFSA and scholarships to help them find the funds that they will need to finance their education.  It is our job to make sure these workshops happen, we need to book the rooms on the campuses, hire the facilitators, order the food that will keep the students from leaving (if you feed them, they will come), ACE is not only about taking college courses, but also about being successful in as many aspects of college as possible.

ACE Registration for Spring 2011

In reality there isn't anything particularly fun about registering 300 students for classes next semester.  However, seeing that I have already written about all the fun stuff the ACE Program does, a lot of the behind scene task that need to be done are behind the scene for a reason.  This last week, exactly a week, I stayed in my office and individually registered 300 students for their classes next semester.  I bring up the student's profile, check their test scores, check to see what classes they have already taken, and register them for the classes that they have not taken.  Keeping in mind that as a program we request a certain amount of classes from the college and the classes we request we have to make sure they fill.  So another one of my jobs is to make sure that all the classes have a full roster, if not then the college will drop the course for under enrollment and the department chairs as well as the instructors will be upset for not filling the class.  The work is slow, tedious, and redundant, but if the students are not enrolled, we wouldn't have a program.

South Mountain Community Colleges Affluent Latino's

When I first started at South Mountain Community College (SMCC) I didn't know what to expect. I figured it was going to be the same as working at Phoenix College (PC) where I was for three years.  The first thing I realized was that PC and SMCC were nothing alike.  First of all PC has approximately 12k students where as SMCC has about 5k.  In terms of diversity PC is much more diverse than SMCC, this is where I saw the most distinction.  Although PC is more diverse, because it is an inner city college, the majority of the students that enroll in PC belong to the inner city, which are typically poorer than the suburbs.  Now, I am generalizing and these comparisons are based upon my own personal and anecdotal experience.  When I first arrived at SMCC, immediately I realized that there where more Latino's than any other ethnicities.  Additionally I realized that in my perception they were more affluent than the Latino's that I grew up around.  Drawing comparisons from my experience growing up in an inner city school and working for an inner city college I made these following distinctions.  The majority of the parents that I came across at Alhambra High School, and PC, were lower working class.  My mom cleaned houses, my dad worked in construction.  Both lived paycheck to paycheck, poorly educated, and weren't able to help me get through college because they had no clue what college was all about.  Many of my friends parents lived in the same conditions.  Adversely, speaking to some of the students that attend SMCC, I found that their parents, although still working class, had better jobs that paid more.  Many of the parents were college educated, professors, and professionals, this was something that in the inner city is not seen as often.  So naturally it gives them the ability to move to the suburbs, with nicer houses, safer neighborhoods, and better schools.  The houses around the SMCC are more expensive, and in order to live here you obviously need more money which means you need a better job.  I found that although PC and SMCC are in the same city, they served different pockets of society, even within the Latino community.  So although we are all Latino's we grew up very differently, which is okay.  It was simply walking into a different world for me.

Personal Post - Book: The Lost Symbol

Another Dan Brown book that you can't put down.  Or at least I couldn't, even when I knew I had to read other books for class and what not, but Brown has the ability to hook you in every single chapter.  Brown's main character for the third time, Robert Langdon battles the forces of evil using clues, solving puzzles, and running from authorities that are good, but can also be bad and you never really what's going to happen.  Which is why I find his work very enjoyable and fun to read.  This time the action takes place in our nation's capital, but as usual, all of it happens in one night.  Which again why I find his reads so much fun, at the end of every chapter there is a hook that forces you to read the next, and next, and so on.  In my opinion as a average reader I find Brown's work very entertaining, uses a lot imagery, so much so that it's hard not to imagine what he's writing.  All the action plays our right in your mind as though it were a movie script you were reading.  I also like it because I am a staunch liberal who deeply believes in the separation between church and state.  Without getting too deep for a class, he speaks of God as something so omnipresent that God doesn't need a religion to exist.  I agree with this notion, too often I find that people are so blinded by religious dogma that they can't see the forest from the trees.

Personal Post - Cooking

I have made it a goal to go to culinary school after I finish my studies at ASU.  Growing up with my mom in the kitchen of our home as well as the restaurant she inherited from her family undoubtedly had some influence in me feeling most comfortable in a kitchen.  I find it is the only place in my house where I feel completely happy in, yet I can lose my self there for hours.  In fact when I am stressed I tend to spend hours cooking, creating, or recreated some of my mom's best dishes.  Almost to the point where there are times I believe I've outdone even her.  I started cooking as soon as I was able to stand on my own, there is a photo in my mom's kitchen where I am barely three standing on a chair stirring a pot of rice.  Growing up I resented both of my sisters for calling me Betty Crocker, but you ask them now to make any of my mom's dishes and they gladly defer to me.  Neither know any of her recipes.  This was when reality set in that cooking is not only a craft, or art, but also a passion.  You have to really like to do it, to be any good at it.  Yet it is completely taken for granted, even if we eat three times a day, everyday.  My only wish is that it paid as much as other sectors in society and was seen for the art that it truly is.  Then I would much rather see myself graduated from culinary school, instead of ASU, then culinary school.