Last year, I led a workshop for Princeton Latine alumni to write down their memories for archival purposes. Below are the notes. I recently reviewed them again. They tell a very personal story about my Princeton experience.
Free write - If you get lost, write “What i mean to say is…”
As I’m telling you my recuerdo, I want engagement from you. In today’s zoom world, that exists in four ways:
A clappy emoji
Chat
Actual response
If it sparks an idea, write down a prompt for you to address it later.
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QUOTES:
I want to start with a couple of quotes that mean a lot to me.
Robin Williams once said in an interview - “To reach the largest audience, search for the most intimate truth.”
And from the character EK Hornbeck in the play “inherit the wind,” “You lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think straight.”
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I’m excited to help create this space for us to share today and not only for those who will come after us but also for ourselves. It’s important to reflect and adjust our perspective on some of our experiences and hopefully you’ll identify with some of the thoughts that your classmates share.
PERSPECTIVE is critical in keeping a healthy life. It’s easy to lose perspective. I do it all of the time.
For instance, I’m guessing you know, graduating from Princeton comes with both its pluses and its minuses.
The pluses - Sure, an amazing education, first and foremost. My writing going in vs coming out, radically different things. I’ll never forget entering Dean Malkiel’s freshman seminar “Civil Rights Movement in the United States” and I thought I was the shit. Until she returned my first paper to me covered in red ink. It looked like she murdered someone while grading my paper. She’s also the one who took me aside early on in class and said, “You sometimes talk about things that are completely unrelated to the topic that we’re discussing. Try to stay on topic” and that is something that I still work on to this day. Listening vs waiting to talk.
Another plus was making lifelong friendships with countless other high achievers. And it’s actually great to have those types of people in your life because you always wanna be with people who push you. It took me time to let go of my ego, I always wanted to be the best in the room growing up, now I always wanna be the worst. Well, maybe not the worst but you know what I mean, I wanna be with people who challenge me.
So those are some of the pluses.
One of the big minuses, to me at least, and I wanna know what your thoughts are -- graduating from Princeton carries a weight to it. I think especially if you’re a student of color.
I used to envy/get angry at the white students because they seemed so happy, to not have a care in the world and I wanted to scream at them, “Don’t you see the weight of the community on my shoulders??”
There is this weird feeling you have that (Social media definitely doesn’t help with) that if you’re not a CEO of a fortune 500 company who is also volunteering at homeless shelters on the weekend while writing your fourteenth novel, somehow you’re not living up to the Princeton degree.
We all have those days when we doubt ourselves. I like to refer to them as Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
But what I have realized and continue to remind myself is, I am a working artist who has made great use of my Princeton degree.
So let me share with you what stands out to me about my Princeton experience.
First, let me go back a little to high school. I went to Whitney Young Magnet High School on the west side of Chicago. That very much shaped me. It was a predominantly Black high school with one of the best college prep programs in the country. I will proudly say that Whitney Young alum, Michelle Obama, actually conducted my Princeton interview….which I didn’t realize until a few years ago. A friend of mine was like, “You know Michelle Obama interviewed us, right?” and I was like, “No, a tall female African-American attorney named Michelle Robin-oh my god!”
Whitney Young was a highly competitive school. Like a lot of you, I was a severe overachiever. That’s what led me to Princeton. I do believe that our greatest strengths are our greatest weaknesses and one of my strengths is this drive that I've always had. This drive to make a difference in the world. To this day, I have to work at being present and enjoying what’s in front me vs being focused on what’s ahead of me.
When I arrived at Princeton, I had a fucking agenda. I was like, “This is Princeton. I’m gonna work hard. Stay focused. Wait, is that an audition notice?” I had been on campus like a week and I was in The Foreigner, Theatre Intime’s first play of the season.
That became one of the two main communities where I felt at home. I wish that I could say the other was the Latino community on campus but nooooo...You have to understand, I’m this heavy metal headbanger kid with a really bad mullet who is Polish and Mexican, still very insecure about his Mexican heritage. I go to my first Chicano Caucus meeting. Javier Kypuros is wearing his big ten-gallon hat, he grabs me by the shoulders and everyone is singing, “Por tu maldito amor.” I casually, quietly make my exit thinking, “Oh, those are the real Mexicans-Americans.” Cuz at that time, I bought into the stereotypes. I believed you were only truly Mexicano if you spoke Spanish perfectly, were from California or Te-jas and knew the lyrics to every Vicente Fernandez song ever sung. It wasn’t until Pachanga came to campus my sophomore year that I met other Latinos who were just like me. I remember meeting this Latino from Michigan whose Spanish was worse than mine and I was like, “Yes!”
No, the other community that I gravitate to is the Black community. Cuz when you’re out of your comfort zone, you grab on to that which is most familiar. When I was at Whitney Young, I hated hip-hop and house music but I fell in love with it in college. Thank you, FOPO.
And before I know it, the Black culture becomes a massive element of my Princeton experience. Who knew? Oh, you want to connect with the African-American culture and understand its underlying influence on everything that is America? Go to Princeton. But I did end up majoring in History, focusing my thesis on the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s strategy attacking racial segregation because my professor for Civil Rights Law and Social Change was the former Director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Jack Greenberg. And, like a lot of us, I took Professor West’s class and studied blackface minstrelsy under Toni Morrison.
And I've been able to talk about all of this in my work. When Justin Timberlake’s first album came out, oh, I loved it. And I hated how much I loved it. Because I was aware of how his whiteness plays a role in his career and that’s directly due to my class with Toni Morrison. So I wrote this 7 minute poem about how much I hate the fact that I really like the Justin Timberlake CD. And I used that to address my own self-hatred about my own white privilege.
Now, I didn’t know that I was gonna pursue a career in the arts when I was at Princeton. I thought that I’d follow in the footsteps of my grandparents. My Polish Grandfather, Ed Kolski, was a ward committeeman and the state athletic director. And he was a Republican. My Mexican grandmother, Irene C. Hernandez, made history in Cook County as the first person of Latinx ancestry to be elected to the Board of Commissioners.
And remember this drive that I mentioned at the beginning? Well, by my junior year, it had not slowed down, it had only picked up speed.
Here’s a poem that I wrote about this moment:
Seven Words
Joe Hernández-Kolski
December
Damn, it’s too cold to be running
I haven’t eaten all day my stomach’s grumbling
Merely 20 years old a Junior in college
Princeton University where I gain the knowledge
That spark on the side of the lake that night
A light that would forever change my life
The NJ clouds are pourin’ down rain
My headphones can’t drown out the pain
My running clothes are all soaking wet
I cannot cry there are no tears left
I keep thinkin’ ‘bout the hours before
I keep thinkin’ how will I survive this storm?
I run so fast I’m losing my mind
I run so fast breath is hard to find
The Dean she is like a mother to me
She entered her office and said lovingly
Joe, you’ve been suspended
I sat there, I couldn’t comprehend it
The golden boy was asked to leave
But I’d worked so hard at this university
From the theater stage to the school newspaper
From the dance studio to the international center
Running discussion groups directing plays
A volunteer Big Brother like a mouse in a maze
I kept running around took no precautions
Searching for cheese found only exhaustion
It came down to one big paper
Afro-Am History thank God my major
Started at midnight finished by nine
Printed it up and turned it in on time
Not my best work but I figured I was fine
But my mind had come up with a different design
My body could no longer tolerate this arduous path
So my mind helped and found an escape hatch
I pushed eject and for a sec I believed I could fly
Then gravity arrived I had to leave for a year’s time
Plagiarism would forever be in my file
A devastating thought as I run that last mile
I run so fast I’m losing my mind
I run so fast breath is hard to find
I arrive at the lake
My heart pounding headphones blasting
I’ve let my parents down shame everlasting
What am I to do?
I am no longer the shining prince of the family
My direction if I only knew
People make mistakes but can that be me
I approach the thought ever so gradually
I ask for guidance and direction
Is it possible that I’m human with imperfections?
And at that moment my life changes forever
The pieces of the puzzle finally come together
At that moment my fears take flight
The doors in my mind open to a great new light
This is the chance I’ve been waiting for
The word “suspension” is nothing more
Than cartoonish implausibilities
I have one year with limitless possibilities
Ahead of me a wide open ocean
Behind me in my wake only false notions
Of punishment pitched at a speed blazing hot
I’m gonna catch it and say “Is that the best you’ve got?”
Suspend?
You can’t suspend me
That’s like trying to stop Inertia multiplied by Chi
Seven Words come to my mind
Seven words I scream so loud on the side of that lake
breath is hard to find
I no longer live for my family I live for me
Within this crisis I will find opportunity
Seven Words come to my mind
Seven words I scream so loud breath is hard to find
There will be no more guilt no more shame
No more martyrdom no more blame
I create the world in which I want to live
I create the life that I want to live
I am human standing here with no armor
I can finally live my own life with dignity and honor
I look up at the corner traffic light
It brightly shines red
I tell myself when that light turns green
Life begins again
I think I’ll walk back
I’m tired of running
As I repeat seven words to myself:
Bring on your warriors
I fear nothing.
That moment was critical for me. I learned that, in the Chinese language, the characters for “crisis” are made up of “danger” and “opportunity.” To this day, I have those characters tattooed to my arm because that’s what I believe. I took this crisis and turned it into an incredible opportunity. I took my suspension year and worked at the White House, doing speechwriting and policy analysis in the Health Care War Room. I worked closely with some of President Clinton’s top writers….by day. I also needed to find a part-time job because the White House scholarship that I had received wasn’t a lot. So at night and on weekends, I worked as a club dancer. I would jump up on a box and dance in a house club for thirty minutes at a time. It was a perfect balance. After I worked in the Health Care War Room, I moved over to the Office of Public Liaison where I worked as the assistant to the director of Latino Outreach. Every time I spoke Spanish, she would giggle. She said, “I’m just not used to hearing you speak Spanish.” Well, that didn’t help. It’s still something that I’m working at.
I returned to Princeton and I was planning on sticking my nose in my books and just graduating. Well…that didn’t last very long. A large group of students had come together in hopes of getting Ethnic Studies into our curriculum. So I joined them and we took over the President’s office for 36 hours to get more Latino and Asian-American faculty hired. And it worked.
By the time that graduation arrived, I realized that government would’ve been an okay career path for me. Government is a powerful medium for social change. That said, it wasn’t personally fulfilling for me. I love the arts way too much. And two things happened my senior year.
Actor/Activist Danny Haro (American Me) came to campus to speak to the Latino students. He said something to the effect of, “I used to be a civil rights attorney then realized that entertainment is more influential.” That helped me change my focus towards Los Angeles. Then a college friend, Jacelyn Swanson, happened to call, looking for my roommate, and she said, “Oh, you’re thinking of moving to LA? Well, I live out here. I’m working for producer Larry Wilmore on the Jamie Foxx Show. If you need a couch to crash on, let me know.”
That was all that I needed. I packed up my grandpa’s ‘87 Chevy Celebrity and made my way out west.
In conclusion, like I said, this reflection, this recuerdo has helped remind me that my time at Princeton really did shape me and my work and I’m hoping that we can use the rest of our time that we have together to explore some of your stories from your time at Princeton and how they can be of use to a broader world. We all attended this tiny private liberal arts school in Jersey and we all have our stories to tell.
ESSAY IDEAS
What’s one thing that surprised you about Princeton? One unexpected thing?
How led straight to your career
Favorite friendship moment
Embarrassing moment
What being Latino/Latina/Latinx