Time Off

Chapter Fourteen

Severino Villasenor showed some interest in computer programming. He found mathematics to be manageable but not that interesting. His least favorite STEM subject had been Chemistry the prior year. As far as subjects like English or history, he found them to be painfully boring but he was able to get through them with B's and C's.  In most high schools, Severino would have been considered an excellent student but at Henry M. Gunn high school he was hopelessly outmatched.

His mother was completely unaware of the educational dynamic surrounding her children. She had never heard of Kumon even as a good portion of the parents were shuttling their children in and out of the rote learning centers since the age of six. She had no clue about the existence of college application coaches, educational consultants, tutors and other hired guns that seethed throughout the community, loading students with proven recipes for academic success.

Severino's loving, well intended mother was unknowingly several steps behind the swarm of laser-focused immigrant families from mainland China, India, Korea and many other education-centric nations that were changing the face of the community, where she always felt more like a guest than a member. Even the historically white base of Palo Alto with its rich legacy of college as a minimum standard, was off balance as education rapidly transformed from a process of exploration and development, to one of gamesmanship and tactics.

Severino had very recently taken stock of the situation in which he found himself floating aimlessly adrift. He had listened to conversations among some of his basketball teammates - conversations regarding subjects he previously tuned out as if he were a child overhearing adult conversation.  Something had changed.  His pulse had quickened in his pre-calculus class earlier that day, not in a way that he would notice. But the combination of basketball, cross country and track, among other athletic interests, as well as genetic factors, had his blood pressure always low and his resting heart rate at around forty. Now ticking at a rate of fifty, triggered by a mild uptick in his output of epinephrine, dopamine and glutamate, Severino was suddenly enjoying a level of focus he had never experienced.

His newfound sense of awareness even spilled over into his basketball play. But his most interesting new development, was tuning into the conversations among his classmates and teammates, particularly those of Asian decent. And he was now astounded by new discoveries that he would have previously ignored completely. Draco Fong, the team's starting point guard was telling another player, Arlen Wu about his classes for next semester. Severino sat a few feet away as they took a water break, and he listened intently to the exchange.

"Dude! Are you serious? Okay tell me again," urged Draco.

"I enrolled at foothill college," explained Arlen. "My mom found out. You can get high school credit for those classes but they are not counted in your GPA?"

"Are you shit'n me? So you can do that?"

"Yeah. Any class that isn't AP, you take outside. Then it's off the record but satisfies the requirement. Then, like, you just take everything AP. You get A's in those AP classes and you can get a five point oh GPA."

"Oh man! I gotta talk to my mom. That is so cool."

"Dude, you better get on it. You're already a sophomore."

"I know, right? Dude. You're all over it. You be playin at Harvard. Jeremy Lin and shit."

"You got it. I'm goin for it."

Severino listened and processed the stray chatter. They were saying the kinds of things he had already heard in bits and pieces. But now, he was able to decipher what they were saying and more important, he understood the implications. As a junior listening to these two clever underclassmen, he suddenly felt like a relic as the eavesdropping continued.