Work

I also feel that when you’re responsible for a big organization and lots of people’s livelihoods depend on me and the success of this organization, I kind of have this responsibility not to wallow in any frustrations, shortcomings, or trials.  You just got to—you know a lot of people are counting on you.  And this institution is two hundred years old, and we have a lot of continuity to maintain, so it kind of puts whatever I’m going through in perspective, and I think that’s useful to get a grip on what are the big issues here, not the little ones.

I didn't know after college that I was going to go to vet school.  I went and worked for a couple of vets, I worked with a large animal vet, I worked on a farm.  I worked for a small animal vet clinic.  I worked at UMass Memorial doing some volunteer work, doing the child life program kind of going between the human side and the vet side, trying to figure out which I would be better at.  I loved the human side but I realized I was probably just too sensitive for that and I got so attached to the kids that I was working with and I didn't think I was probably the right personality for going into human medicine.  I would've gone into pediatrics, that was definitely what I loved [laughs], but then I realized that would probably be too emotionally hard for me. So, it was hard being a vet too, but it was something I thought I could handle better. 

That trip was quite interesting in some ways. I thought it was very exciting being almost 11 years old. We got onto a ship in Shanghai, the SS General Gordon. And we were on third class, so we had – were not in the greatest of places. But, we landed in San Francisco. The trip over was like I said, interesting because we stopped in three different places – we stopped in two different places. We stopped in Yokohama, Japan and we stopped in Hawaii and then we landed at San Francisco. And we went to Worcester due to the fact that there were –some of the churches in the Worcester area were, at that point, getting involved in trying to sponsor people and the people that- in, it was I think a Baptist church-the family that decided to sponsor us were here in Worcester. And when we got to San Francisco we got a ticket on a train and went all the way across the country from San Francisco to Chicago, from Chicago to Worcester.

When I helped produce a film a couple years ago I realized we don’t have any equipment or anything here. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had our own little studio. Well now it’s – my own little studio has grown into – we’re building up the roof on this, it’ll be the second largest film studio in the country. it’s a big film studio! It’s a pretty impressive space, I’ve tried to align myself with some folks, we’re trying to make this happen. We’ve already raised a significant amount, but we’re hoping to raise a good deal more and build it out the right way. And I – we do believe the films will come.

My father  was the one who prepared me for college. He, from the time I was in the fourth grade and he realized that I had skills for academics, took me out – I’m sorry I’m crying – and purchased a  desk for me. And we didn’t have a lot of money, but he went out and bought me a brand new desk that I picked out because being a student was my only job. Excuse me, he encouraged me to look at Smith College. I wasn’t looking at any other single-sex schools and he asked me to look at Smith College and took me around to all my college interviews and helped me prepare the tape, my audition tape, for all the schools. He’s the one [who] went out and bought the equipment to be able to make a recording, I recorded a Mozart concerto and I played the flute part and then I learned the piano part which was condensed for an orchestra score and he recorded both parts. So, I accompanied myself on this audition tape. So my father was a huge contributor.