Hey, friends and neighbors! In case you're wondering about me, I want to share a little about who I am.
It all started in upstate New Jersey because that's where I'm from. Some people think New Jersey is all factory smoke and endless miles of highways and suburbia for days. But actually? Where I'm from is not like that. See, the northern part of New Jersey has all these small towns and each one of them is pretty much in the middle of nowhere. There's a lot of woods and cows and woods and dirt roads and...did I mention the woods?
Which is nice when you're older and you go back to visit and all. But growing up there, I was totally bored. So I focused my creative energy on visualizing the
kind of life I wanted to live when my real life started. I made a lot of wishes about how I wanted my future life to be. I couldn't wait to graduate and move away for college.
The cool thing about college is that you can totally reinvent yourself once you get there. If you want to be a different person, college is an awesome opportunity to make it happen. Because dude! No one knows you there yet. So you can be the person you've always wanted to be. You can be the best version of yourself and start fresh with a new, exciting life. Sweet!
Not that you have to wait until college to be your most awesome self. Every day I challenge myself to become a better person. And by better, I mean someone who takes care of other people, who tries to always be a friendly neighbor, and does what they can to make the world a better place to be. But it was hard for me to be my ideal self when I was in high school. Most people say that high school is the best time of your life. Question: Who are these people? They've obviously completely forgotten what it was like.
Here's the thing. Junior high and high school test your survival skills. You will probably never be as depressed, frustrated, confused, lonely, devastated, or absolutely mortified as you are in school. But! This is a good thing. Because for the rest of your life, you will never have to go through such bad times again. Nice! Also, surviving hard times means you become stronger. With pain, we gain strength. And the stronger you are, the more you can enjoy your life.
You're probably wondering why I had such a traumatic
high school experience. Well, I'll tell you. I was an outsider. Kids picked on me for being a nerd and doing weird things like
writing song lyrics all over my Keds, or being the only one
laughing in class when no one else thought it was funny, or actually loving physics.
Which is cool, because everyone knows that nerds grow
up to be the most successful, creative, loving people.
But it was lonely at the time. I don't have any brothers or sisters, so I spent tons of time alone growing up. I mean, I had my group of friends, but I didn't really feel like any of them got me. It was more like they were my group of friends because that's how it had been for so long. Books were my true friends. I would read my favorite books so many times the pages would start to fall out. And I was so thankful that the authors wrote those books, that their characters inspired me to never give up.
I spent a lot of time imagining my ideal life and how I could create that life when I grew up. These dreams motivated me to work hard so I could go to an excellent university. Kicking academic butt really does open doors for you, even ones that you never knew existed. When I got into the University of Pennsylvania, it finally felt like my real life was starting. And living in Philadelphia rocked because I'd wanted to live in a city for so long.
My seventh-grade science teacher inspired me so much that I knew I wanted to become a science teacher when I was 12 years old. I moved to New York City and got my master's degree from NYU. My favorite thing to do was walk around the Village, looking into windows at night and imagining how incredible it would be to live in this neighborhood one day. The power of creative visualization is really strong. All of those walks I took on gorgeous spring nights, just feeling how amazing the energy is here and believing that I would live here one day, have manifested in my present reality. Of course, I haven't reached my ultimate goal yet. Which is to own a brownstone on a street that's been calling out to me since before I even lived here. As with all of my other dreams, I will never stop believing.
When I started teaching, I lived on the Upper West Side and walked home from school every day. But then I heard about some schools in other neighborhoods that didn't have things like books and enough desks. And I'd hear about how so many good science teachers would never even think about teaching in those neighborhoods because they didn't have to. New York City has a huge shortage of science teachers, which means we can pretty much teach wherever we want. Why would someone want to teach in a school without enough textbooks, or a solid support structure, or basic supplies like paper? And it just made me so mad that privileged kids in rich neighborhoods get all the resources, while the kids who need those resources the most never have enough. So I packed up my stuff and switched schools. I was a high school physics and earth science teacher in the South Bronx from 2000 to 2007.
The purpose of my life is to help teens in some way. When I first thought about leaving teaching so I could have more time to write books, it was a hard decision to make. How could someone who worked her whole life to get to this place decide to leave it? But then I thought about the way reading saved me when I was younger. And how I could reach more teens as an author then I ever could as a teacher.
So now I'm a full-time author. I never thought I’d switch careers like this, but that’s the thing about life. Life is a wild thing. You never know where it’s going to take you, or how your journey might unexpectedly change. But as long as you follow your heart, you will create your ideal life. And that’s the ultimate destination.
Email Susane: friendly.neighbor@hotmail.com
