ORPHEUS BUSTER-BROWN
In an attempt to write a BIO about myself (unnerving for me as a general rule) I really am not sure where to start. So as I was contemplating this I thought back to one of Paula’s sociology classes on the American family. I also thought of Ted’s family background. I realized to some degree I was a man without a country. I was raised initially on Cape Cod MA., by bohemian beatniks from the infamous 1960’s counter culture. My parents hung out with Alice and Arlo at her restaurant in Barnstable County. An important note is about my grandparents; both Dartmouth graduates, my grandfather was a pilot in WW II, and a successful insurance salesman, while my grandmother raised and was a homemaker for their 7 children (6 girls and one very unfortunate son). They lived in a colonial 7 bedroom farmhouse on national conservation land on Cape Cod (now a family estate), which my grandfather repaired, toiled, and fixed up. As a family they celebrated all the holidays, with family pics and the “leave it to beaver” Normal Rockwell experience. While my own family was a dysfunctional hot mess, personally I believe I lived in paradise. I had a vivid and large imaginary world, a world very isolated from the real world that I was soon to be introduced to.
My mother left my father when I was six, and moved my younger brother and I to western Massachusetts. When I was nine we moved into a multi-cultural student living apartment complex just outside of the famed Western Mass University of Massachusetts in Amherst. On my first day in this dysfunctional suburban ghetto I received my first black eye from the neighborhood bully. This was my introduction to mainstream America.
This and many other early childhood and adolescent incidents left me disenfranchised and marginalized, and I floated (sank) to the fringes of society. I was and am a part of the MTV, generation X culture of the Sex Pistols, Velvet Underground, The Ramones, Rambo, Chuck Norris, PMRC, and DARE. I never took my SATs, or had any desire to go to college. I did receive my high school diploma, though I was high at the ceremony. Overall my teenage years are a blur.
Honestly, I really thought I had arrived and was quite content to leave my hometown, party, grow pot in Vermont, collect guns and work as a dishwasher. Then I met a girl, and it’s all downhill from there. I moved to Phoenix, Arizona (try and picture this): a rural New Englander with a mild substance abuse problem, no skills, or social capital to speak of lands in 110 degree (September) weather and no idea what a city looks, sounds, or smells like. Thank god I had achieved some skills as a line cook in Vermont, because I tried roofing for about five minutes in the Arizona sun, not my bag.
The relationship deteriorated, and I was alone in a strange city without funds or means, but I did achieve a degree in culinary arts and was working for minimum wage at a highly prized resort. Then I met another girl…she got pregnant and I grew up, sort of. For the next 4 years I worked, excelled in the culinary arts, and found serenity through chemistry while I attempted to juggle this parent, husband thing, and not very successfully I might add.
All this introduction to my life has a purpose, and is crucial to why I am writing this essay. Mix all this up into a Mad Libs game (add in any noun, verb, adjective, place, time, action) and just plug in my anti-social behavior, I probably witnessed it or participated in it (you know deviant behavior-wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what I mean, know what I mean). My life took a dramatic turn in 1999, the state of Arizona felt I might have a problem with drinking, possibly, or especially while I was driving. My life without my permission took a turn that I was absolutely unprepared for, I got clean and sober, divorced and moved to Sonora, California over a span of 5 years. Within two years of this I got sole custody of my now two children, and within that time I married my current wife. During all of this chaos I had risen to executive Chef and was now a culinary instructor at a tech school. I had been in kitchens since I was 16, and I was coming up on 25 years in the hospitality industry. So I was clean and sober, I had had several transformations, I had accomplished many goals, and raised two amazing children, but I was really very unhappy, I wanted change (I didn’t know it, but she did).
In 2007, after the housing crash and the loss of our house, I had a small nervous breakdown and my wife finally (5 years later in 2012) convinced me to enroll at Colombia College to work towards a counseling and human service degree (working with recovering addicts and such). So let’s put this into perspective. I am a parent of a 16 year old daughter and an 11 year old son, on my second marriage, clean and sober 13 years, living with my wife’s family members, and am a type A-personality culinary warrior with a slightly jaded metal head rage complex from Massachusetts. Now I am going to a small community college in the sierra’s in California……….okeydokey.
What I didn’t know was I was about to walk into the most crucial parts of my life, I was about to take all my experiences, successes and failures into the world of academics, and I was going to thrive. Furthermore what was my original agenda when I enrolled at Columbia College, shifted quickly towards goals I personally didn’t ever believe I would be able to obtain. I came to school for a career change, and now I am transferring and moving towards UC and CSU education, because I can. I am learning for the sake of knowledge, not to find employment (I have been employed, it is over rated). I did not have an epiphany or an awakening, what I had was two crucial events that organically shifted my perception. This was my introduction to Ted Hamilton and Paula Clarke, kinda by accident (though my wife had suggested I take their courses). These two professors exposed me, mentored me, and directed me towards a potential that, besides by my wife, had never been suggested before.
I have a 3.75 GPA, on the presidents list, and am transferring to the Bay Area with honors from Columbia College, in part due to my own effort, and in part due to the guidance, confidence, and support of Paula Clarke and Ted Hamilton. I am working towards UC Berkeley (my dream) and hopefully a graduate program and someday a doctorate in psychology. I have grown exponentially and now have a new skill as an academic student who is thriving and happy every day I get up and walk onto a campus. Considering that I used to walk on campus at UMass, to pilfer, vandalize, drink, and play with college students in high school, I think I have come a long way.