Cornell and Me

So over the weekend I'm checking my email and there's one with the subject "[Contact Me] Speaking Opportunity." Thinking that by "Speaking" it probably means "Viagra," I open it expecting to see rock bottom prices on pharmaceuticals.

Instead, it's a graduate student who is an advisor for the East Coast Asian American Students Union at Cornell University, and she wants me to come and conduct a workshop as part of a series of workshops on some aspect of the state of Asian Americans in the arts, for "college age kids trying to figure out their identity among other things." She had seen some of my YouTube videos and thought I might have something to say about the Asian American experience.

Laughter ensued.

I'm a 34-year-old man, working as a temp at an ad agency, living with 3 roommates in an apartment decorated with action figures and dust bunnies, whose most significant creative contribution to the world as of late has been YouTube videos which I make in my living room. The kids I'll be speaking to will be pre-med, pre-law, business school students, well on their way to earning more in a year than I normally see in three.

That said, I'm COMPLETELY doing it. And taping it. And putting it up on YouTube.