February 2008

All the popular blogs are doing it.From: What Privileges Do You Have? - based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. (If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.)

1. Father went to college.
2. Father finished college.
3. Mother went to college. (for 1 class)
4. Mother finished college.
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.
9. Were read children’s books by a parent.
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18 assuming that sport counts.
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18 assuming that sport counts.
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
16. Went to a private high school
17. Went to summer camp (requirement for the middle school I went to)
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18
9. Family vacations involved staying at hotels. Much less than 50% of the time.
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18.
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child.
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house.
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home.
25. You had your own room as a child. I got the guest room in my teens when we didn’t have guests.
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18.
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course. (all free)
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16. (Dominican Republic, Miami)
31. Went on a cruise with your family.
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up.
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.

I actually did a Google search to get the original exercise, and I laughed really hard, because post after post had most of these lines emboldened or underlined, and I’m here with about 6 lines in bold. And as I graduated junior high school, a predominantly Latino school, I never knew I’d be inundated with products of such privilege. Maybe it’s the idealist in me, but I thought that having this kind of privilege would make it easier for some of my classmates to become more benevolent, especially since they had less worries economically and got a head start on much of the material we studied in our four years.

Unfortunately, that not only proved false, but it’s one of the many factors that played into my antagonism towards some of my classmates. They were so comfortable with their privileges, they more readily demeaned others who couldn’t / wouldn’t get certain items. And naturally, it only got worse in Syracuse, where stories about massive car wrecks only made me and my friends roll our eyes after the person who caused the accident would say “I’ll just get a new one from my Daddy in a couple of weeks. No big deal.” And when you have “Juicy” sprawled across your ass, it’s a really easy life … really.

This isn’t to say that I haven’t had a lot of luck in my own right. I went to a poor but well-managed public school, a good middle school with small class sizes, and a private high school with its share of good resources. I had a lot of opportunities that most people in my demographic didn’t get, nor even realized they could. I’m a product of these fortunate events, and I’m happy I got what I got.

In this country, there’s this politics of access. Those to the right of the issue say that everyone has access so long as they try their hardest. They’re the ones that usually ask “Why don’t these people work hard to attain what the rest of us have?” Those to the left of the issue are the ones usually asking “Why doesn’t everyone have the same access to these privileges?” I find myself to the left, since the politics of the left demands a lot of deep digging, and deflecting the images posted in front of us about the grandness of this empire. Underneath it all, there’s no equity, and underneath it all, we don’t do enough to reinterpret successful tips for the underprivileged in this country (and in dirty not-so-secret secret news: in order to have rich people, there must be poor, and thus with all the very rich people there are many destitute areas all over this country.)

You can give people access to museums for free (NYC does it), but will they have the proper education or historical background to understand what they’re observing at the museum, even with the little notes telling them what the artifacts and painting represent?

You can have free opera showings and Caucasian-centric musicals for the masses, but do you risk telling other cultures theirs is not good enough to be considered “cultured”?

You can give as much financial aid to some of your less privileged but promising students so they can attend your institution, but are we preparing the population who got in through a trust fund or as a legacy for the culture shock as well?

Because if not, access is simply a way of telling people “See, we did something” knowing that it would do nothing to ameliorate the problem, quasi-placating the critics and thrusting the responsibility on the victim.

I’m even aiming this at well-to-do Blacks and Latinos, many of whom forget from whence they came, but that’s another post altogether. The politics of access demands that some people have it and some many don’t, because if it’s something everyone has, it’s not that special and hence not a privilege. Yet, those who already get the privilege consider it a right of birth, and don’t know what to do with themselves when they lose those “rights.”

I suppose that’s the irony of not having anything; having something above anything is considered a privilege, and when you have nothing to lose, there’s nowhere else to go but up.  Right?

jose, who wants to know how to get  1/2 a million without the FBI catching feelings …

Tagged as: life, meme, politics, poverty

{ 12 comments }

A few notes:

1. I spotted a couple of gems online that I’d like to share with some of you:

• Sickamore of XXL Mag fame posted a blog comparing the Manning family to the Corleones (Godfather). Now that I’ve actually watched The Godfather, I get the joke. It was funny as hell to me, so I had to share.
• Pandagon posted the definitive guide to Nice Guys, and a subsequent post in comic form. As a former Nice Guy, I approve of this post.
• Aaron posted this crazy dope video about math education that I’m sure a good third of you will appreciate. The other 2/3rds better know the ledge …

2. Yesterday, I went on a photo shoot with my boy Jon Serrano, an up and coming artist extraordinaire. This year’s going to be fun. He’s got some serious projects in the works, and I’m a part of that.

3. It’s a wonderful Sunday, so I need to hit that gym early. I’m already seeing a little progress, but I still need to work harder to get to my target weight. I’m trying to lose that Bygbaby weight.

4. Speaking of which, I’ve already done Crazy 8s, and Lucky 7s, so I’ve been tagged to do the Sick 6s. With no further adieu …

• Georgetown was my first choice for college because one of my teachers went there, but also because Patrick Ewing went there. Syracuse, its rival school in the Big East, became my #1 choice junior year of high school, after I came to my senses. Consequently, I’m happy with the decision I made going there.
• I clean my room thoroughly maybe 13 times out of the year.
• My Google Reader has sufficiently calmed down my OCD habits of checking people’s blogs for updates and responses to comments. I’ve also begged asked people to fix their RSS capabilities (Bam, .chanel) or enhance them (The Unapologetic Mexican) so I don’t get tempted to regress. Big shout-out to Dan by the way for asking me to go full monty on the RSS feeds. Most of you seem to prefer that.
• I lesson plan the morning of, though I usually know a few days before what I’ll be teaching and how I’ll teach it. For the last week, though, I’ve been lesson planning early. Maybe it’s because I get more sleep nowadays.
• I got comebacks for every diss my kids serve to me, but I try not to cross over the “mama” line … except once. The kid in question said, “Mr. V, you’re not a G, you’re an H, like a herb! HA! You get no girls. In response, I said, “If that’s so, then why is it that when I call your mom, she always picks up?” He ran out of the room in shame and never crossed the line with me again, and whenever someone else tries to diss me, everyone tries to stop the person. Like I told another one of my kids, “I would care, but I got an icebox where my heart used to be.”
• I’m a terrible procrastinator, and I’ve left assignments undone.
• BONUS: I have a rap recording out there somewhere in the world. Good luck finding it.

I’m done. Like I said, I’m off to the gym.

jose, who loves carnivals that read like narratives …

p.s. - This week, I got some serious heat for you all.

p.p.s. - Please sign here. It’s for the 94K voters in California whose votes didn’t get counted because the bubble sheet was badly designed. Please. I implore thee. Pretty please. With a cherry on top. Err, that’s too 5th grade. Just do it. Or else. I’ll knock your Technorati numbers into oblivion. OK, maybe not. Just … just go. Thanks.

Tagged as: meme, short notes

{ 4 comments }

Shocked? Bewildered? You shouldn’t be.

Outside of Dennis Kucinich, I haven’t been impressed with any of the candidates really. I’ve disbanded myself from all political parties, and frankly, I’m disenchanted with all the choices I have now, which leads me to this:

“We must understand the politics of our community and we must know what politics is supposed to produce. We must know what part politics play in our lives. And until we become politically mature we will always be mislead, lead astray, or deceived or maneuvered into supporting someone politically who doesn’t have the good of our community at heart.”

- Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech, April 12, 1964

I’m no Malcolm, but I swear he’s speaking to some of us from the grave. I had a discussion about the discrimination that both of the candidates face with my lady, and while I contended that Obama and Hillary face their own discrimination based on their race or sex respectively, I also found myself discussing people who didn’t really speak to me. As I’m chomping down my arroz con habichuela (rice and beans, people), I’m sitting there like a fool trying to justify whose plight is worse in the media.

Just then, I think: really, are they looking out for me?

When we look at Hillary and Obama based on their voting records, they’re almost identical. Obama diidn’t get to vote for the Patriot Act or the Iraq War. Yet, Obama’s still lambasting Hillary for a vote he seems to support (since he continues to use his votes to fund that war). Hillary’s camp (looking at you, BET founder Robert Johnson) made some rather harsh and albeit racist comments towards Obama, so even with all the sexist comments people make about her, she has a hard time gaining any credibility with her deft tactics.

On paper (i.e. their plans and designs for their version of America), Hillary’s got the better health care plan, saving hundreds of dollars against Obama’s plan, and many years in politics to back up her claims. On TV and around the country, Obama’s got a better movement behind him, people of all races and classes rallying behind him, and some of the most thrilling speeches in recent history. But frankly, I even support Al Gore’s positions from 8 years ago more than I do either Obama’s or Hillary’s at this point, and I’m definitely a more educated voter now.

The candidates’ plans are all pipe dreams unless we really start investing in our own self-worth. No celebrity-filled pop music video featuring my favorite artists or stacks of campaign money from some of my favorite actors and actresses can convince me otherwise. I couldn’t care less for Obama if he has no clear position about education when he’s been a huge beneficiary of excellent education in this country. I couldn’t care less for Hillary either (or Bill for that matter), especially since her political bedfellows include GOPers keeping us from true and universal health care. It’s been fairly obvious that, despite all the progress we think we’ve made, the poor are poorer and the rich are richer.

I often think that there’s no point in me voting in a heavily Hillary-influenced state like New York for any of these candidates if the Most Children Left Behind Act still helps corporations privatize education and helps destroy unions, if the need for universal health care doesn’t awaken any of these candidates who line their pockets with monies from those very companies we need protection from, if we still have young men and women dying needlessly for oil’s sake and when they come back into the country, we don’t respect them by giving them adequate benefits for them or their families.

Of course, I won’t even touch McCain, Huckabee, or whoever the Republicans will try to throw into the race since the higher-ups aren’t pleased with their leading candidates. They’re a crowd I wouldn’t get too close to for fear of contracting a plethora of contagions and other icky shit.

And I love seeing people get into discussion about politics and how it affects them, but we can’t vote for the politics of “the lesser of two evils.” It’s either that we vote for the person that represents our views or we don’t. And if we don’t like the person, then let’s withdraw our vote until we like who we see. To paraphrase Malcolm, I’m not shooting my bullet ballot until the right candidate’s up in my range.

jose, who wants to know what you’re thinking as you read this …

p.s. - Don’t just throw out the word “teachers” in a crowd just so people can clap for you. Either you really support them or you don’t. Simple as that.

Tagged as: politics

{ 24 comments }

The one question every person in this profession faces is the ubiquitous “Why do you teach?” (The most recent comes from Sherman Dorn). It comes from kids, parents, friends, and family. I don’t know whether it’s out of pride or pity. Everyone can list their favorite teachers and most hated teachers, and those people usually had a greater influence on their lives than the teachers even recognize.

After all, I can tell you how coming from the Lower East Side, growing up in the projects where one resident compared this area in the mid-90s as a modern-day Beirut with the residue of 1980’s drug warfare and Giuliani fascism, with so many Black and Brown faces falling that Chico might have run out of paint to make those famous murals for them. I’ve seen enough roses, hearses, ambulances, arrests, little blue bags, blue, green, purple, single mothers, and red caps to write my own gangsta rap. Some of my own cousins come in and out of jail like a revolving door, and even some of the kids I grew up with were crack babies wishing for some peace in their minds. I slept with the sounds of gunshots and arguments outside my window and woke up with the same elements. People in my hood actually killed each other over a pair of sneakers or some brand new toy. As proud as I am to have come from all of that, that’ll be enough for anyone who’s even caught a glimpse of the better life to want out immediately.

I was one of the fortunate few to make it out with some sense of integrity, though other more personal issues plagued my soul. At times the only sanity I had was the rituals and routines we had in school. I knew I could count on learning and expressing myself academically, and no one could tell me different. I can personally tell you every great and not-so-great teacher I’ve had since elementary school. I couldn’t tell you much about college other than the activism and the parties, but that’s all extracurricular. Yet, even the teachers I hated had some influence as to why I teach.

I remember my language arts teacher in 7th grade, who, for anonymity’s sake, I’ll just refer to as Mr. D (and no, D /= dick, but just the same). He was a tall man who always had some nervous head movement, probably from too much coffee, and he spoke so sharply, he could’ve scratched his chalk against the board and that might have been more pleasant. He didn’t have a nurturing bone in his body. Rather than help me out when I tried to understand the present participle, he would just argue with me and act like I was trying to best him. Rather than showing me the difference between saying “What happened?” versus “Excuse me,” he’d make me write “What happened?” 1000 times (no hyperbole here, folks). Thanks to him, I not only remember the lack of efficiency in that assignment, I learned the meaning of carpal tunnel very early.

He’s not the only one either. There’s the dozens of teachers who opted to ignore me because it’s easiest to ignore the only “Black kid” in an all-honors class, who would rather throw me out of class than hear me out, or who found it easiest to suppress my inclination towards knowing my history because it’d be much easier to express their conservative views for their own pleasure. Easy pickings for a teacher when the student’s submissive.

Yet, without a doubt, I can honestly say that I’ve had some of the greatest teachers from elementary school onwards. To simply list them would be a disservice for everything they’ve done for me. And this is why I teach: not only is this a job for me, but it’s an understanding that I’ll pay forward what I’ve been given. There are teachers in our system who are case studies for the retraction of tenure, but the teachers I’ve had by and large not only made me the man I am, but gave up so much of themselves to be figures of inspiration for me. I did my end, working hard to achieve the heights I did, but when I got out of line, they disciplined me. When I needed the encouragement, I got it and tenfold. I remember their ability to make me feel like everything I had to say was important, and my thoughts mattered, and for someone with the aforementioned history, it means a million.

That and all the vast experiences from acting and singing in front of thousands to my activism and organizations helped me hone my strongest qualifications for teaching. And NYCTF almost didn’t give me a chance, but I must have lucked out. Either way, I took the opportunity, and ran with it as far as I could. I’m still running, too.

Because despite my difficulties with my homeroom, my administration, or other teachers, when I walk into my classroom, I’m given another reason to love what I do. Whether it be a student who, for a day, had an epiphany that he or she would be the best student in the class, or the teacher who’s got another student anecdote, I’m loving it. I’m not just a teacher who gets off on random praise from people. I love the feeling of an accomplished lesson. In some ways, I even love my failures because they teach me something about me as a person, not just a teacher. I’m overwhelmed usually with the amount of work I have to do with my kids, but I can never complain about this job getting too boring. I get a thrill knowing I have a set of audience members for my show from 8-3. Quite the contrary, I like how everyday there’s a new set of problems for me to solve, and even as I’m teaching my kids math, I’m learning along with them.

Now, I’m in the process of refinement, making steady progress towards getting my kids prepared for the state math test coming in March. I want to seek victory from the experiences I’ve gained this year, but it’ll come one day at a time. And to think, I was told by another teacher that it was my idealism that would prevent me from becoming the best teacher possible. To paraphrase Bobby Knight, “When my time on Earth is gone, and my activities here are past, I want that they bury me so they can kiss my ass.”

jose, who was just given the best blog of the day. i think i’ve arrived …

Tagged as: education, nyctf

{ 10 comments }

Cold Stone Creameries, Saturday.Michael Jackson blaring through the stereos above while some kids dance to it.

I’m chillin’ with my girl, scooping up on Cookie Doughn’t You Want Some and bragging to his girl about being a thriller in the sack.

A trip afterwards to the Virgin Megastore, and along the way, me giving pound to a dreaded VJ by the name of Sway while “The Bridge Is Over” by Boogie Down Productions played outside.

Stupid and simple moments like these make me believe that life has a purpose, no matter what the purpose was, and if it doesn’t, then let me not ruminate on its existence and use the time to live it to the fullest.

George Clooney helps me think on this some more through his role as Michael Clayton in the movie with the same title. On the one hand, we will readily sell out the next human being for millions beyond our necessity. On the other hand, we have people who will risk death (and life) to uproot these deft villains of human rights and liberties. Are these villains simply that evil or is it because they’ve ascended so high into the economic stratosphere that they’ve lost the ability to do the things normal people do, like breathe?

Naturally, this message became clear right after, when my girl wanted to have a little late-night conversation over at the Europa Cafe near Times Square. At first, we were a little wary after seeing all these Black and Latino youth surrounding the area in packs, something we hadn’t seen in that specific area since we started dating.  Then, it became especially weird when the front of the cafe had a line of dudes in the front, and I had to cut right through them. They were in some hostile formation I recognized from my own neighborhood. Something was amiss.

After sipping on my hot chocolate and her on her tea, we noticed the cafe closing at 1am, again unprecedented, but they seemed to be in a rush to move everyone out of their establishment. A busboy guarded the door, letting no one in while we heard sirens go off. A few minutes later, we heard more sirens go off, and as I turn and peek into 42nd St., there’s a blockade formed by the police. Imagine: one of the busiest streets on Earth completely emptied of anyone but cops. My first thought was, “We need to get to a train.” Then it became, “Fuck that; we need a taxi!”

I turned around, and the same boys and girls crowding the area had friends whose hands were bloodied. One young man had his hands completely red, and I did my best not to stare.

BANG BANG BANG!!!

Shots go off, and I immediately get into hood mode. I take my girl into the taxi, and we ride off into 34th, and I literally yelled at the taxi to move as quickly as possible.  The first thought that crossed into my mind was, “Why does this happen, even in parts where no one’s causing any problems?” Then it became more about the teenagers themselves, and why even in those settings, they were still prone to violent behavior? Is it because that’s the only way they’ve been taught how to act or because they have such a lack of self-worth that they have no problem even ridiculing how they’re going to shoot someone to death than keeping that promise?

That ate at my conscience for a while. I woke up, still a little tense from the previous night’s events. Then Sunday happened, and I remembered why I liked humans again. We’re prone to failure. We cheat, steal, lie, and even make dumb grammatical errors we have no business making. Thus, the best of us try to elevate those situations, even as we wallow in our misery. The best of us fight that feeling to give up on each other, even when we lose ourselves in a greater human cause.

On Sunday, I awoke, went to the gym, and wanted to go to the ALM’s house. I got on the bus, and of course, I would get the bus driver who’d never been on the route in his life. He made the wrong turn, so as he’s trying to get back on his route, we knew what was coming. He surpasses the first obstacle of making that first left. Then he tries to make that second left, and CLANK! The bus (an elongated bus with 8 wheels or so) hits a car in the back. He tries to step out, and CLANK! He hits another car. 7 people depart from the bus, leaving only the brave few.

So people who could have been the fathers and older brothers of the same people in the previous night’s scuffle came out and tried to help the bus driver (a Joel Klein doppelganger) out, and within 20 minutes and a little direction from me, that’s what happened. I didn’t make it to the ALM’s house, but there is the triumph of the human spirit. These men had nothing to lose, and in other situations, they’d laugh or scream at the bus driver for not knowing his route. We jeered him for a bit, but after a couple of car crashes and some screeches, we went into action.

Damn.

Not that these stories had anything to do with the Giants win. We can’t expect people to come from so much high expectation and adversity like Eli Manning, and for everyone to have a Tiki Barber, a friend turned enemy who threw him under the bus at every chance he got, or even a Jeremy Shockey, who attacked him about leadership, making snide remarks. But imagine after everything Eli’s been through, he still found 50+ guys behind him, and some coaches in front, who believed he was their guy. They’d lay out anyone and everyone for him, because as he goes, they go too. If he’s the underdog, then they’d be his fortress. And a small collective of Giants fans who actually believed in Eli since the first day, through his struggles and losses rejoiced at their apparent stubbornness.

After conquering the Goliath that was the New England Patriots, my cousin calls me on the phone, screaming and almost in tears over the win. I yelled along with him, a primal scream acknowledging the weekend that was. Even in the most insurmountable odds, the triumph of the human spirit can prevail. It takes a little ass-kicking and some serious inspiration to make that. There’s no one word to describe how events so contradictory and yet so meaningful meld into a full 72 hours of a human experience.

Heart.

Struggle.

Love.

Triumph.

Yeah … something like that.

jose, who still hasn’t done the “Why I Teach” post, but will get on it tomorrow …

Tagged as: giants, inspiration, philosophy

{ 2 comments }

:: screams this in hi-def::

We are the champions, my friends!!!!
We kept on fighting till the end!!!!!
We are the champions!!!!
We are the champions!!!!
Nobody’s perfect!!!!
Because we are the champions of the NFL!!!!

Just had to get that off my chest. Now, back to losing my voice …

This has made my otherwise insane weekend that much sweeter … or that much more insane. More on that tomorrow. Enjoy this post, yo …

jose

Tagged as: giants

{ 6 comments }

Am I sure I want to make this kind of leap?
Why leave the confined of a blog where I amassed what feels like thousands of comments (100+ comments in my “Fuck Bush” post alone)?
300+ subscribers?
almost 5 years of blogging?
Tons of forwards, friends, and acquaintances
And I was able to start some shit at will?

Good question …

A year ago, I started this humble blog in the hopes of upgrading from an energetic and random blog to a more personal and grown-up vision for how I wanted to represent myself, not just on the Internet, but in real life. While my site, The Jose Vilson, is really my home, the blog under that name is really the mouthpiece, analogous to rap’s role in the hip-hop culture. While there the other elements of hip-hop like breakdancing, turntablism, graffiti, and knowledge make their presence felt, rap is the centerpiece now for the rest of the culture.

In February, I was just trying to find my way around this vast blogosphere, hoping I could take some of my Xanga brethren along with me for the ride. That worked only within my inner circle (you know who you are). Thus, unlike Xanga where it’s much easier to reach out to others, join communities, and subscribe to other blogs, and have all these activities neatly centralized, I had to go and reach out to the blogosphere is much more messy, hoping my Google results let me run into someone who shared a similar interest in topics I held most vital in my mind. By May, I had already settled on writing about teaching, because I didn’t find very interesting educational bloggers through any of the search engines at first.

I would be the first Black-Latino NYC / LES educator / poet / blogger, and that’s my niche, and I wouldn’t compromise my message for fear of retribution from any school district, board, administration, or any other person who even remotely knew me. No pseudonyms. Just me.

But of course, I couldn’t arrive at this by myself. Despite my independent nature, I have a great understanding that, like the blog carnivals and Technorati authority numbers we see around the blogosphere, I couldn’t have arrived at the place I’m at without a little help from some awesome bloggers. Naturally, I’m inclined to thank NYC Educator for his awesome advice regarding my classroom situations. His was the first blog I read dealing specifically with NYC education, and he pulls no punches. I also thank him for linking me and one of my first popular blogs (”16 Things I Learned This Year“).

NYC Ed led to me meeting many of the blogs I link to or have in my Google Reader or blogroll. Miss Profe, who introduced me to other underrepresented bloggers like The Field Negro, a man so popular now, I can hardly get to the bottom of his box comment to write to him. Just his link to me in his “Blogs I Am Feeling” section led a lot of traffic this way, and I couldn’t be more grateful. From Miss Profe, I also found thefreeslave, who in turn put me on to the Afrospear. Of course, that group helped me find other random blogs like The Unapologetic Mexican, and the slew of Latino blogs I needed to balance the other parts of my identity. Of course, the Carnival of Education helped me find teachers like Repairman, dy/dan, Frumteacher, and Ms. Whatsit.

And before I knew it (July 2K7 or so), I stopped blogging over there and focused on blogging here. Finito …

But even after 4 layout changes, 84 readers, a Weblog Award finalist award, and 874 comments later, I’m still humbled by the love shown to my blog. Granted, it takes a while for me to write these essays after my long day at work, and it’s more about staying reflective in my teaching and life in general, but I also see the importance of sharing those experiences with people around the world. As cheesy as it sounds, I would prefer that I stay at the level I’m at if it means I can keep inspiring others at the rate I’m at than becoming more popular and not inspiring anyone at all.

Because of this blogoversary, I present my top 5 lists …

My Favorite 5 Blog Posts:

1. L’Chayim: I Wish For You 100 Years of Success But It’s My Time
2. Walk On Water
3. A Synopsis of the Road Less Wanted
4. Having Your Cake and Eating It Too, Workshop Model Style
5. 16 Things I Learned This School Year

My Posts I Wish More People Read:

1. Actions Affirmative
2. It Doesn’t Feel Right
3. Follow The Leader
4. Love, Reign O’er Me
5. I Remember When … (School Edition)

Top 5 Post Topics That Didn’t Quite Make It Out Of Draft Mode

1. The day I found staplers in my pastelito (I still get queasy thinking about it), then had a roach slip out of my piece of cheesecake, and when I went to shower, there was no hot water … all in a matter of 4 hours ….
2. My dedication to Joe Budden (cool dude, but Mood Musik 3 wasn’t better than MM2)
3. Why I can’t stand those kids who still wear 80s gear like Reagan’s still alive
4. My workout plan (because I stopped doing it for a good 3-4 months and only recently resumed)
5. A flashback to my days in Catholic private school (it’s not ready yet)

Top 5 Reasons Why I Really Moved to My Own Site

1. If you’re a writer that has the means to host your own site, have control of its content, and use whatever editing software you want, then you should have your own blog site. Ownership of your own material is important.
2. It’s rare to find Black- and Latino-owned blog sites in general, so here’s +1.
3. I hate having to Google my full name and find everyone else but me.
4. As previously mentioned, there aren’t many (any) bloggers who write about my experience at all.
5. A deep-seated necessity for needing to change my space.

Top Five Tag Lines I Might Use Again in 2008

1. jose, your favorite math’s teacher’s favorite math teacher …
2. jose, who laughs at sites like Boycott Chuck Norris …
3. jose, who wishes he could thank every single blogger, new and old, that shows him love, which he might have just done …
4. jose, who has constant cravings for some …
5. jose, who stands by his contradictions …

jose, who must do this again next year …

Tagged as: blogs, life, year in review

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