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Learning for me began in June, 1988 when I stepped onto the Butte Community College Campus in Oroville, California. I didn’t know then that I would develop a love for language. Like many of my students at Los Angeles Valley College, all I did know was that there was a place for me in education and it was my responsibility to find it. In a short time, I had an Associates Degree in Liberal Studies, a wedding ring on my finger and enough gas money to drive down I-101 to the University of California at Santa Barbara where I would begin my study of English Literature and Mandarin. After my first year at UCSB, I was so taken with the Chinese language that I took a summer off work and went to study in an intensive language program at Tsing Hua University, Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China. I returned from abroad and set into my studies vigorously. I graduated from the University of California Santa Barbara on December 14, 1996. Soon after leaving Santa Barbara, I chose to attend graduate school at Mills College in Oakland, California. I was impressed with the rigorous literature program and also the fact that there were so many visiting writers at Mills. I jumped at the opportunity to work with and know the writers that produced the literature that I loved. At Mills, I was immersed in the writing culture and came to understand it as a vital part of our world community as a whole. I received an MFA in English and Creative Writing from Mills College on May 15, 1999.
The students at Los Angeles Valley College have given and continue to give me the opportunity to share and pass on the gift of language. Each semester brings a fresh group of students who will temper and forge the skills of writing and language and use them to change not only themselves but the world around them. I am so grateful to have the joy of knowing these amazing people.
Recently I retuned to school after a four year absence, this time as a post baccalaureate in the TESL, Education program at California State University, Northridge. While studying for my certificate there, my son Aidan Quilici arrived.
This is what I thought I knew.
Education is finite. It’s not. If the seed is planted correctly, we never stop learning. Whether it’s through the knowing eyes of sixty ESL students all with individual hopes and dreams, built on the promise of a new country and life, or from the wondrous eyes of my now two-year-old son brimming with possibility, we never stop learning. If I can instill this ideal in my students, then I feel my time at Valley College has been well spent.
