“On Becoming Profe” a speech by Alexis Romay

Alexis Romay of the Language Department delivered this talk at the Senior-Faculty Dinner in Fall 2015.

On Becoming Profe

Thank you, Class of 2016, for selecting me to be your speaker at the Senior-Faculty dinner. It is an immense honor for me to be standing here. That might sound like an exaggeration (even though I’ve told you a million times I never exaggerate), but I assure you that, perhaps without knowing it, you’ve made every Cuban’s dream come true. You have invited me to eat and speak. What do those two acts have in common? If you want to be literal, yes, they both start at the mouth. On a deeper level, they both are commonly perceived rights that tend to be privileges in many places around the world, including my native land. Many of my compatriots fled Cuba precisely so that they could do those two things. Those are also two of the main reasons why I’m here! So let’s eat and speak!

As you may have noticed, I’m reading from a printed piece of paper, which means that I have forgone the freewheeling ad lib style. There’s an explanation for that. Most of you are familiar with the series of picture books If you give a moose a muffin.

In these books, the authors explore how a single decision can sprout into far-fetched ramifications. Well, if you give a Cuban a microphone…

you never know when he’ll be done talking.

So, to avoid an endless speech, and because I am a writer, I thought I’d organize these thoughts into a hopefully coherent narrative that might be of interest to you, the seniors.

That’s a very heavy word, senior; I feel it hanging around your necks, every single one of you, and weighing you down. I’d like to lighten your load for a few moments, and share some of my own experiences. Because I once sat where (some of) you are now: petrified that the next step I took would define my life. And it did, but not in the way that I thought, and certainly not in the way that it seemed, at first.

Therefore, my talk tonight is entitled “On Becoming Profe.”

For those of you who do not know me, I’m the Cuban novelist formerly known as Alexis Romay. For the past 3 years, I have shared my life with a kinder, more patient version of myself named Profe. It is likely that by now, some, if not most, of you have a sense of who Profe is. But do you Alexis Romay? Here’s my origin story.

I am the Wolverine. No, I am clearly not. (Wolverine doesn’t speak Spanish.)

And of course, when I say, “I sat where you sit,” that’s a figure of speech. I didn’t attend an independent school in Livingston, New Jersey, where intellectual curiosity was encouraged. I was a student at a military boarding school in Havana: a dogmatic institution in a dogmatic country, a prison for the mind within a larger prison for the soul —a school where regurgitating the governmental point-of-view was a ladder to success; a place in which questioning authority, even as a teenager, could land you in serious trouble, and all of this at a time when everything that was not forbidden was mandatory.

Now: can you imagine a high school where going to college was looked down upon by the administration? All the students in the military boarding school I attended were being channeled into the Cuban armed forces, to become officers. These days we talk a lot about internal and external motivations. As a father and a teacher, I emphasize the importance of doing the right thing because it is right to do, reading because it brings pleasure and engages the mind, learning for the sake of learning… But it was not the internal motivation what got me into college. It was the looming threat of the draft, which sent Cuban troops to wars in Africa and Central America —to kill or be killed in the name of an ideology that I didn’t profess. If you didn’t place into a college, that was your next destination.

When I decided that I didn’t want to pursue a military career, even as an officer, but that I wanted to go to university, the high school administration deemed me, alongside the handful of peers who also wanted to move on to civilian life, a disappointment. Perhaps even a traitor! At some point they called me “a disgrace to the Cuban military uniform,” which ranks among the top ten compliments I have received in my life.

The school put all sorts of pressure on us to reconsider studying in one of the army universities in the Cuban capitol. When that pressure was not enough, they placed as many obstacles as possible before us so that we couldn’t properly study for, and subsequently, take the equivalent of the SATs.

I, along with a small group of like-minded students, had to sneak out of our military boarding school and hitchhike (don’t you do this!) in order to attend prep sessions at another civilian boarding school nearby. In order not to stand out, we had to beg, borrow, and trade the uniforms from that school. And we did this on several occasions. We’d normally take off on a Monday, and come back on Thursday, missing our own classes. Our school didn’t really care. To the eyes of our administration, we were outcasts.

We lived this clandestine life until the principal of the other school stopped us in the hallway, half in, half out of uniform. And asked us, Who are you, people? What are you doing here? We explained, and he allowed us to attend the sessions, but wearing our own military uniforms. Because he didn’t want anyone to think that we had fooled him.

Now I ask you, seniors: can you imagine a place where you have to struggle in order to be allowed to take the SATs? Where you have to beg, borrow, or trade a uniform in order to infiltrate an SAT prep session?

So I took that exam, at a third school. Now, can you imagine finding out your exam results by going back to the school where you took it and looking for your name and your score, which are posted publicly, on a wall, ranked from highest to lowest scores? Oh, the nostalgia…

Can you imagine a country in which the universities not only have the right to tell you whether you are fit enough to be admitted into their institutions, but also what your major will be from the start? Think about that. I applied to study English literature at X University. I was admitted to Y University, in the art department. Looking back on that, it was a very good thing that I didn’t study English literature at a Cuban university. I think they would have ruined it for me.

But at the time, I was pretty devastated. Still, I moved on, and I had a great time at university. I made great friends in the art department. We lived like Impressionists when we studied Impressionism; we lived like Dadaists when we studied Dadaism. In a crumbling Havana, we clearly had nothing better to do but to image we were European poets and painters.

But somehow, all the intense focus that had driven me to escape the military track petered out once I was an art student. I had lost interest, track, and motivation. In my sophomore year, I took a leave of absence. Thankfully, I made sure to leave the door to university open. There was another external motivation: The Law of Social Dangerousness, or Pre-criminal Danger to Society, which “allows the Cuban authorities to detain people who they think are likely to commit crimes” in the future. “The charge carries a penalty of up to four years in prison.”

It wasn’t until I saw the movie Minority Report that I felt the Cuban system had been portrayed accurately. And my wife thought it was science fiction!

As an almost college dropout, I had no idea that there was another country in my future, but after doing menial work for a few months in a cultural institution, I knew that without an education, I could have no future in Cuba. I went back to my university and really did turn it around.

Now we jump several years ahead. Somehow I made it to the United States.

If you want to hear that story, you’ll have to invite me back again. But suffice it to say my shoulder is still sore. I consider myself very lucky. I managed to escape brainwashing, censorship, fear and ideological fanaticism. And I am always aware of it.

But some days, I notice it more. I grew up with ration cards in which the Cuban government would mark the amount of rice and beans, among a couple other basic staples you were legally allowed to buy for your household. Let me emphasize that this was all the food you were legally allowed to buy for the month. And it wasn’t enough. So flash forward to my American days: three years ago, my lovely wife took our son to an art class where they had a sandbox in which the toddlers could play with uncooked rice and beans. I was revolted. I couldn’t imagine anything more obscene. That was, of course, until I heard of a mythical place in which people roll around in chocolate sauce… for the fun of it! I’m not saying this to make you feel bad. If I were an American teenager, I, too, would want to be rolling in chocolate, and instagramming the hell out of it. (#LivingLaVidaLoca)

But, alas, I will never be an American teenager. So I would like to remind you that your universe extends beyond these walls, that your education doesn’t stop in the classroom, and that, fortunately, you live in a world in which traditions can be questioned and revisited.

I have found my way to this podium after a decade and a half of trial and error. I have danced an intricate tango between two industries, publishing and education. Since the late nineties I have had the opportunity to teach at three different school systems under very different circumstances. From 1997-1999, as an art teacher in middle school in Havana; from 2004-2005, as a language teacher at a public school in the Lower East Side, in New York; and, since 2013, at Newark Academy, hoping to prove the truism that third time is, indeed, the charm.

There were so many things wrong with my first teaching experience in Havana that I wrote a novel about it. It’s called Salidas de emergencia (Emergency Exits).

There were so many things wrong with my high school that I wrote a novel about it. It’s called La apertura cubana (The Cuban Opening).

There were so many things wrong about my last job in the publishing industry that someone else wrote a novel about it. It’s called The Hunger Games.

And it is precisely because I have found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time, in the wrong job, the wrong city, the wrong country, that I am fully aware of what a privilege it is to wake up on a Monday morning and be truly excited about the week ahead. Life is long. You get to try a lot of things. You may not be in the perfect place at this very moment, but wherever you are, take advantage of it. Learn as much as you can.

As I was writing this, I realized that one of my favorite role models got it wrong. Dare I still call him Master? Fine: Master Yoda. He famously told me… or Luke, or all of us: “Do or do not. There is no try.” But of course there is try. There’s nothing else but try. How else are you going to fail, on your path to succeed, if you don’t try?

Nike, the ubiquitous sports brand named after Niké, the Greek goddess of victory, took Yoda’s motto, stripped it bare, and gave it back to the public in all its cynicism: “Just Do It.” No. Don’t just do it. Do it with gusto! Put your heart to it. Consider what you are about to do. Be mindful about it.

I say tomato. You say tomatoe. I say potato. You say #YOLO. I say precisely because you only live once, and precisely because anything you post on social media will be out there, orbiting the universe forevermore: Think it through. Don’t just do it!

And make mistakes. (Just not on social media!) My students know that I don’t let them apologize for making mistakes in Spanish class. How else are they going to learn if not by mispronouncing, misconjugating, getting the tenses and the genders wrong? You learn the most from your mistakes. So make mistakes… but learn from them. And then make new mistakes. Whenever possible, make mistakes that do not harm you or anyone else.

I envy that possibility. There was no room for error in the Cuba of my youth. Anything you did could be construed as a crime against the state that would mark you for the rest of your life.

Soon you will climb a literal mountain that will serve as the perfect metaphor for the road ahead. There will be stumbles, there will be struggle, and you will doubt yourselves. If you allow me to quote Jorge Luis Borges, this is from his short story “The Garden of Forking Paths”: “Then I reflect that all things that happen, happen to one, precisely now. Century after century, and things happen only in the present. There are countless men in the air, on land and at sea, and all that really happens, happens to me.” And it is a fact: everything that happens, it does feel like it happens to you.

I tell you my story, not because it is fascinating (although clearly it is), but because I want you to consider that you can get a great education anywhere. And you can get a lousy education anywhere. It all depends on you. You have an incredible advantage as students in this school. You may be weary of hearing about your privilege. And in fact, you may not feel so privileged. You have a big long slog ahead of you. Senior year is not for the faint of heart! But keep in mind you are not alone. You have a community of people who want the best for you, and who will help you get through this.

So, to recap:
Lesson number one: Question authority.
Lesson number three: Make mistakes and learn from them.
Lesson number five: Learn basic math.
Lesson number ocho: Put your heart into everything you do.
Lesson number… whatever: Put things in perspective.

Having nothing more to add, I am Alexis Romay, better known as Profe, and I approve of this message.