{"id":20068,"date":"2024-09-11T12:13:19","date_gmt":"2024-09-11T16:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/?p=20068"},"modified":"2024-09-11T12:13:19","modified_gmt":"2024-09-11T16:13:19","slug":"back-to-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/back-to-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to the Future\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Social media feeds are awash with first-day-of-school pictures of eager students each September, and I recently added the photo above to my feed a few weeks ago to mark the occasion of entering the 19th grade. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forty years to the day that I stood in the gardens of the Great Hall for my Freshman Orientation, I returned for New Graduate Student Orientation as I embark on attaining my Graduate Creative Writing Certificate. I parked in the furthest parking space and took the long way there to get acclimated to the new buildings that have sprung up since I last walked this campus in the \u201980s, and<\/em> I got my Apple Watch steps in to boot! Side note: When is the bookstore going to stock Monmouth-branded compression stockings? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I took the long way to this garden orientation in more ways than one. Sure, my Apple Watch has a built-in GPS to guide me around campus, but there was no road map for my family as they dropped me off at Elmwood Hall in September 1984. I was the first of my clan to attend college; my Irish-born parents worked tirelessly, saving grubby dollar diner tips and New Jersey Turnpike overtime pay to make this move-in possible. They poured everything they had into this proud moment, and I squandered it in the first semester with \u201csumma cum lucky\u201d grades. My plan was to load up on science classes in pursuit of a degree in pharmacy that I\u2019d eventually finish elsewhere, but I soon learned that a bartender is a pharmacist with a more limited inventory and decided to pursue the \u201cpub \u2019n\u2019 party\u201d curriculum instead.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I fell in with some communication majors, falling in love and eventually marrying one of them (Barbara Miskoff \u201989). I took shifts on WMCX, wrote music reviews for The Outlook, and landed bit parts in Woods Theatre productions. Academic probation was a strong motivator to change my major from biology to business, and the grades soon improved. These experiences would become a blueprint to \u201cdoing life\u201d for the next four decades. In between carpooling my daughters and taking business meetings overseas as a biotech senior commercial leader, I somehow managed to write six novels, three award-winning scripts that were made into short films, and produced two off-Broadway plays. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I maintained warm ties to the campus, serving on a number of alumni boards over the years. When the pandemic hit, Monmouth University pivoted by offering Zoom classes as part of their Adult Education Series<\/a>, and I was asked to facilitate a series of memoir writing classes<\/a>. I am so grateful for this opportunity as it has awakened my life purpose for the rest of my time on earth. I now exist to empower and enable others to tell their stories and fully realize their creative potential, and so I return to campus this time around to deepen my own creative writing abilities so that I may help others do the same.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I walked the full length of the campus after orientation, a man strolling through his past while eager to face new challenges with the wisdom and experience that comes with grey temples. I watched students stitching new friendships in the quad near the residence halls, and I offered a silent prayer that they discover new love and enjoy the same lifelong alumni bonds that have sustained my wife and I through 32 years of wedded bliss. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I rounded the corner on the Great Lawn apartments, I encountered a man about my age struggling to negotiate a large television from the back of his weathered pickup truck. I offered him a helping hand as he moved his daughter in, and he thanked me in broken English. As I approached him, I noticed speckles of paint on his hands, wristwatch, and white Converse sneakers. It brought me back to a time 40 years ago when my own Irish immigrant father packed his dreams for a better life into the boxes that went into his son\u2019s dormitory in Elmwood Hall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am grateful for this full-circle moment and relish in the experience of being back at home to write the next best chapter of my life! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four decades after my first day on campus, I\u2019m back at Monmouth for a new academic adventure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":20077,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"image_focus":"{\"x\":50,\"y\":33}","hide_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-back"],"thumbnail":"\"\"","catString":"The Back","issue":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20068"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20098,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20068\/revisions\/20098"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}