Weekly Meanderings, 20 May 2017

Good for Jorge Campos:

A Manual Arts High School senior whose family of six was homeless for three months after his father lost his job will be attending Harvard University in the fall, thanks to a USC program.

Jorge Campos, 17, currently lives with his family in Palmdale. His days are typically long, ending late and starting early, as he makes the approximately 140-mile round trip to his high school in South Los Angeles and back.

Campos was just 13 years old and set to begin high school when his father, an auto technician, lost his job. The family was homeless for three months, living in a van, out of hotels and staying with other relatives.

“Right now, I look back and instead of breaking down and crying like I should, because they were quite traumatic experiences, I just look at it … and look forward,” Campos told KTLA.

As difficult as his circumstances were, he didn’t let them deter him from succeeding academically.

That same year, Campos — a USC TRIO Upward Bound Scholar — enrolled in college level courses at Los Angeles Community College. He needs to complete just three classes to earn his associates degree in Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

Homelessness was a motivating factor in shaping his education, as it prompted the teen to learn about finances, according to a news release from USC.

He even learned how his family could transition from a “high loan risk” to homeowners, which helped them purchase their home in Palmdale two years ago.

“I took on the budget. I took on all the finances. All the bills that are paid at home run through me,” Campos told KTLA.

The son of Mexican parents, Campos grew up in South L.A. just blocks away from the University of Southern California campus in Exposition Park. He was invited to join the USC TRIO Upward Bound Math and Science program at his high school his freshman year.

The program is geared toward helping high school students who are first-generation college bound, low-income students fulfill their potential and go to university. It provides students like Campos educational tools and resources at USC.

If you find his size, I recommend one for David Fitch: (Perhaps Blackhawks design?)

Male romper. RompHim. Bro romper (bromper?). Public onesie. Jumpsuit, variety: short. Or, perhaps, just a romper that happens to be worn by a man.

Whatever you call it, the one-piece clothing item preferred by babies and women at outdoor concerts has officially hit the male fashion mainstream.

The sartorial whisper became a scream this week when a project called “RompHim” launched on Kickstarter. RompHim is, quite obviously, a man-sized romper offered in several pastel colors and prints.

The campaign presents the RompHim as a mildly obnoxious, devil-may-care garment for young men with an abundance of money and/or self confidence, who never skip leg day and spend the summer weekends at their bro’s house on the Cape. Which is not to judge! That is definitely an aesthetic.

As Molly Worthen has argued in a much-debated op-ed piece, lectures can thereby serve “as an exercise in mindfulness and attention building, a mental workout that counteracts the junk food of nonstop social media…. A lecture course teaches students that listening is not the same thing as thinking about what you plan to say next — and that critical thinking depends on mastery of facts, not knee-jerk opinions.” In CWC we even go the extra mile to shock and appall Wired readers and require students to take notes by hand, banning laptops, tablets, and smartphones unless such a device is required for a disability accommodation.

But it goes deeper than that. Done well, the historical lecture can cause people as self-centered and distractable as 21st century American teenagers to forget the incidentals that preoccupy their short attention spans and focus on the lives of others made in God’s image and the enduring questions that those experiences raise.

In that sense, the lecture both causes students to forget the present (temporarily) and then engage it more thoughtfully (moving forward). Even if students lost 95% of whatever limited information I conveyed as soon as they left the classroom, I can guarantee that at least one awkward, uncomfortable question I raised will bubble up later in their minds. They might well disagree with me (I hope so!), but they will have had their attention focused on a problem that — if they’re from the majority culture — they could easily choose to ignore. [HT: JS]