November 9, 1998
This week, a group of people came to talk about their troubled lives and how they overcame certain obstacles. The first speaker was Rod Santos, an Assistant Dean at City College of San Francisco. The second group of speakers was from a local Asian gang called OTC. The speakers from the gang were Channing May and Sun.
Rod Santos started off his lecture by talking about his troubled youth. He stated that his mother killed herself because she couldn’t take the abuse from her husband. He also mentioned how he transformed from a person who always got into trouble to a person who was an Asistant Dean at a college. I was very intrigued by his feel good story. It made me realize that I can be just like him and make something out of myself. He really should be applauded for all he has overcome and he was even brave enough to admit that he was an abuser himself. I really liked his lecture. He made comments that were very inspirational and he made us all think about how we can make the most out of our future if we try.
The second speaker was Channing May from an Asian gang. When he first spoke, I was really scared of him. I guess I shouldn’t make any stereotypes but he looked like a person that would rob me in the streets and even kill me in cold blood. Those were the types of people that I grew up hating. He did talk about his hard times when he was a kid, like witnessing his father’s brutal death. In a way, I felt bad for him, since he didn’t grow up in the ideal way. He was trapped in a society that lived off of drugs and violence. That made me realize how lucky I was to be able to have a stable life free of drugs and violence. The other speaker, Sun, summed it up best when he stated that he wanted live in our shoes for once.