Already five minutes late to my first EMT class, I race down Comm Ave. toward the Boston College campus, I did not realize how large it was. Staring at the small map on my phone I desperately try to orient myself. In my rapid movement my phone drops down on the pavement and splits open. I stop to look around. I had not noticed how beautiful the place was; to my left the sun reflects off the Chestnut Hill Reservoir, to my right Gothic towers and sprawling greens.  In that moment I just knew I had time so I sat down to roll a cigarette (I know) and contemplate my surroundings. I inhale. I exhale. The world is calm. A young women appears before me and asks for a smoke.  She explains that she is late for her first EMT class but she needs to calm her nerves. We bond.

As we enter the classroom we are confronted by a line of students waiting to register and receive books. We speak more about our personal lives. She explains that she just moved from a small town in upstate New York to Dorchester to live with her boyfriend and that they were struggling to make it. The young man in front of us chimes in to agree. He is a Marine Corps veteran who has just come back home, trying to become a firefighter in his small MA town. Later that night I met a first generation Chinese-American student from central MA hoping to be the first doctor in her family, and a Latino from Chelsea  who just graduated from high school and was looking for a fast track into nursing.

This class ended with no real content discussed, just an explanation of the course schedule and basic housekeeping. But even so I sensed something different about this course, something that both invigorated and put me at ease. It struck me as I walked with one of my classmates to the Chestnut Hill train station after class. Our whole walk was filled with alternating admiration and ridicule of the rather affluent area we were travelling through, I had not had such an authentic conversation in a while. Later in the night it dawned on me that this was the first time  in five years I had been in a course where the majority of students were working class. In the wealthy enclave of Chestnut Hill and Boston College my first lesson was economic. To be continued…