High School Dropout to Harvard: My Life with Dyslexia by John Rodrigues

Author:John Rodrigues [Rodrigues, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-04-01T18:30:00+00:00

6

At the Foot of the Mountain

I could still remember sitting on a beach in Bali, surrounded by the warm evening air that smelled of spiced coconut, sandalwood, thick ripened mango, and sea breeze. Now I was sitting on the fourteen-hour flight to London, which would be followed by a nine-hour flight to Los Angeles. You know that feeling you get when coming home from a relaxing vacation? It feels like you danced just a little too much, and you still feel the whisper of that last drink, but your skin soaked up the sun, and you just feel at peace. Like a long day at the beach. That’s how I felt on my trip back multiplied by six years. When the plane touched down, I had no feelings of “coming home.” While the ship was a traveling home of sorts, it did not feel like a definite place I could call home. My parents’ home was not my home either. Even though I had amassed savings, I am technically homeless—but I feel as free as ever, so it does not matter to me. I feel as though I’m riding a wave of accomplishment that had a swelling momentum. Success seems to beget success. Breaking through to success is harder than staying successful. I found that once I started doing the things I wanted to do in my life and once I became really good at doing those things, I just landed on opportunity after opportunity. A long time ago I read a book that said, “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” It’s true.

Between hotels and visiting my family, I meet up with a lot of old friends. One of them is my old chef instructor, whom I visited at the construction of a new culinary school. The cement was still drying in some parts of the building but the kitchens were fully operational and pristine. We walked through the building together, catching up and sharing stories. He was now one of the founding partners at this new school. “How would you like to teach a class here?” I could do “great things with international cuisine,” he persuaded, before giving me a ballpark number. I had not come here looking for a job and I had never formally taught students, but I figure …why not? So I say, “Alright” and so begins my teaching career.

I pull my chef’s jacket and toque off the hanger in my office and walk to my classroom. Everyone in my class wears a white jacket and mine is one of the perfectly tailored French jackets I acquired during my work abroad. The toque is my tall chef’s hat that is creased and folded one hundred ways (for the one hundred ways to prepare an egg, the myth goes). I wear black slacks but my students must wear checkered pants that denote their student status. The first classes outline teaching procedures and methods, then a series on knife skills, and today we actually work with ingredients for the first time.

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