Education

I was really fortunate to have landed the position at Lamoureux Pagano because that firm, I just fit with it.  It worked for me.  I was able to contribute and as I said, Dick Lamoureux and Mike Pagano were the ones who hired me.  They were the ones, principles of the firm, and they also—similar to my parents—I never once remember them saying, “Well you should do this because you are a women or only do this or….” There was none of that.  They encouraged me sort of in an objective way.  It was what skills I brought forward and what I could do.  They continually advanced my career as I was able to prove myself basically. So when I graduated it was 1993 and then the next step in terms of becoming an architect is becoming registered, you’re not done with your education. You have to have practical work experience.  You have to work within the field, at that time it was three years and then you could take the exam and the exam was a four or five day exam in Boston one day after another and it was all these different components including: structural engineering, programming, site design, building design, and so I studied for that.  I’d get up at 5:30 am every morning and study and then go into work—for a year—and then I went in to take this exam and in between I had my daughter so it was a lot going on at that point.  My daughter was born in 1993.  So that career is very intensive.  I think a lot of people think that architecture is a sort of, I don’t know,  a lot of people will come up to me and say, “I’ve always wanted to be an architect,” and I’ll say, “Well yeah, it’s a great career,” but  I don’t think most people understand what it takes to become and architect.  

I would say the people are what makes Worcester so distinct. I think it’s a city filled with people who are really passionate about bridging difference. I spend a lot of time working with organizations that work with refugees and immigrants and that’s where I see Worcester shine the most. I think it is such a welcoming city in that sense and I think people are really great about opening their arms and minds to that. I feel like anybody who I know who’s lived in Worcester and has lived here for a long time, I just have never really seen in other places people have that much love for a place. Just really, there’s some sort of intimate connection people have with the physical you know place of Worcester that I think is really, really wonderful and inspiring and makes me want to engage with the city even more. And I’m just so lucky because I get to see so many different sides of the city with my job. You know I work with 35 community partners, I work a lot with Worcester public schools and a lot with like I was saying refugees and immigrants. I just see a lot of people who are really passionate about seeing this city—not only seeing this city becoming great, but believe that it’s already wonderful and great and, because it is. I mean it doesn’t necessarily look like, it’s not gentrified, it’s not it doesn’t look like downtown Boston, but I there’s so many great things about it already that it doesn’t need to be something different. I mean I do think all the influx of restaurants and the new construction’s great too, but I think, I just think it’s such a shining gem of a place and it’s wonderful to work with so many people who care very deeply about their neighbors. You know neighbors physically, but also just the people in their own community, so I think that’s what makes Worcester really special.

So, there is no question that when they come back, I remember. You know, as a teacher and that’s a long memory, so that’s pretty good. But the connections, there’s no question about it. The connections that you make with the children, with their families. I feel as though it’s—again, that community, and I think the parents—I feel very strongly in working in a partnership with parents. It’s vital. Absolutely vital. And so, we’ve been fortunate enough, at Bancroft, that I think that that connection happened and can happen at any school. I’m glad that can happen there. But, I think that working in a partnership with parents, on behalf of their children, is probably what I think has really meant a lot. And the children, they are so unique and I always feel that there’s a child, with problems or misbehaving, or whatever, I used to say, “Okay, what am I doing? Why is that happening?” It’s not, “I’ve got to figure it out.” It’s not that the child has to figure it out, I have to figure it out how to get to that child. And so that’s that puzzle, that’s what keeps it always exciting I think, “What can I do?”  

I belonged to the Women's Alliance which was a feminist group that I wanted to see what that was like.  So we would end up talking about what we were studying a lot and that always—I learned about myself.  That was always beneficial for me because I learned about myself. Even in my current jobs I still see this.  It’s sort of the abstract ideas that give me energy again.  Like what I do in my job to a great extent is supervise a whole bunch of volunteers and supervise employees and write grants and do budgets and write fundraising letters and all these things. But when I want to sort of get energized again about doing it, and I love doing all that stuff, and I'm not really a scholar, but if I go and I read in the field, like if I go and do some research to present a talk, if I do some historical research, or when I was working running an art center, I would go to the college art association and just hear art history [laughs].  That gave me a bunch of energy and so for me that was a big part of the mentoring groups there. 

I sort of feel what happened in my poems, I write about hurt, and I wonder maybe—and sadness, especially hurt in my poems—because other people in my family couldn’t.  I think that’s why I write or why I have things to write about because I’m feeling [what] other people are not able to express, but also I’m expressing things for them.