Port Scholar Chronicles: The Longshoreman Student Experience: A Memoir

This ain't no rags-to-riches story. I still got the rags, just added some knowledge to them. Every morning at 5:30, that alarm goes off and I make a choice - stay comfortable or stay building. By 7 AM, I'm working on machinery that costs more than houses, inspection logs in one hand, coffee in the other. By 5 PM, I'm sitting in a classroom at San Francisco State, grease still under my fingernails, trying to keep my eyes open while we discuss Social Determinants of Health.

The thing is, I LIVE those determinants. Born in San Francisco, working in Oakland, studying back in The City. That Bay Bridge? That's my office hallway, 4 times a week, $8 from the “O” to the “Sco”. That's $16 in toll each week just to exist between two worlds that weren't supposed to meet.

But here's what they don't tell you about transformation - it don't happen overnight, and it definitely don't happen dirty. March 2011, I got clean. Fourteen years later, I'm still cleaning up, just different messes now. Instead of dealers, I'm dealing with professors. Instead of running from cops, I'm running to catch the 5 PM class after a nine-hour shift.

This memoir? This is for every mechanic with a dream bigger than an engine. For every addict who thought recovery was the end goal, not knowing it was just the beginning. For every working man who been told "that's not for people like us." For my mom who never stopped believing. For my father's memory. For my sister who sees who I'm becoming, not just who I was.

21 units left till graduation. Five courses between me and a degree nobody thought I'd get. But I'm still here, still grinding, still proving that impossible is just an opinion from people who gave up too early.

Welcome to my world. Where diagnostic codes meet ZIP codes, where working class meets academic class, where recovery meets discovery. This is the Port Scholar Chronicles.