There has always been times when I first got to Canada that I always felt like a minority because Canada is a very white place. So being in a white place as a man of color or a boy of color growing up, I just knew that I was always different. Because in a class full of 25-35 students, I was the only person of color in that class. That's only because we were, the Canadian migration system is different than the U.S. so that, there was a very small number of migrants when I was growing up. It's changed now there's clearly a lot more migrants and immigrant populations in Canada, but back in the 1970s, there was very few of us.  So in dealing with that, I had to deal with stereotypes, name calling, physical fighting for--- Student: Just being who you are. Dwaine: …just being who you are and just being picked on. So as a male, I grew up learning how to defend myself. I also learned about micro-aggressions. I have a word for it now “micro-aggressions” but I didn't have a word for it back then, which means essentially those subtle ways which people will use language and call you things. I've been called everything from “nigger” to “paki “to “queer” - I mean all kinds of different things in my growing up experience that were words that were very wounding. So those words actually caused me to feel a sense of, “I need to defend myself” because people are questioning my masculinity, my sexuality, my race, and my just ability to do things. By them labeling me those things, it meant that they were saying to me indirectly that, “you are less than, you are the other, you are somebody that can never be successful.” I think we all think about quitting. And I'll give you a scenario that I don't want to refer to it as this but I've learned that this is a scenario that goes on for a lot of people of color - we often refer to it as the “imposter syndrome.” It's a syndrome where we are in a place of authority or a place of leadership, and we've achieved something, we may have a degree in our hands but we're still in the back of our minds feeling a sense of lower self esteem than somebody who has the same piece of paper, same credential, that may come from the dominant group. There is a sense that they have a sense of entitlement to it. Whereas for me, in growing up, there was always that fear of someone is going to discover me, and you know, how you pull the rug out from under somebody and you fall. And so that fear of always falling or failing was always part of my growing up experience. So I still think it affects me even today, so I'm always, so my compensation for that is that I am always super well prepared. I will try to always be overcompensating.  So if someone for instance is going to do this much work, for the same thing, I'm going to do this much work. Student: Just to prove you know that you can. Dwaine: Not only that I can but that they can't or whoever is going to see me in that place, but know that I've gone way beyond what was expected. So they can't say, “Oh he's failed at that because he only did the minimum, and therefore he is a reflection of his ethnic group or he's a reflection of his race, or he's a reflection of his inadequacy, we expect that of them only able to go this far.” That's what goes through my head. Student: What was your biggest obstacle you would say your first year of college? Dwaine: Oh my first year in college: learning to read, learning to balance time, learning how to be a serious student rather than just a joker who was, who got by on the things I was able to get by on high school. Learning how to overcome that imposter syndrome that coming back to the idea of how I actually got to where I had gotten. In other words, in some respects for me, getting into the university for the first time, my first year, I even felt that imposter syndrome too, where I said to myself, “Am I really, do I really have enough skill to be here?” So those are different moments in my mind where I have that feeling that I wasn't necessarily qualified to be there. Student: Kind of doubt. Dwaine: Yeah absolutely, doubting all the time. So my parents come from a culture where college was everything. So they, both parents only went to high school, they finished high school. And they didn't necessarily, in their society that they grew up in which is Trinidad in the Caribbean, have the resources to go on and do a university degree. In a small micro society like that, a very very small percentage of people within those societies actually went on to do college, university. So for them it was never necessarily an option and when they were growing up also it wasn't necessarily a requirement. I say it’s a requirement now because if you don't have a university degree of some kind, you have a hard time becoming successful. Student:  Getting a job and all kinds of stuff. Dwaine: Back when they were though coming out of high school, that was more than adequate in their time to actually get a decent entry level job. Times have changed and clearly now a high school degree will typically take you into a service like job, working pushing a broom, you know serving at a restaurant. Those sort of jobs, you know, really service oriented. Back then though when my parents were coming through, that wasn't necessarily, you could actually get a kind of white collar job, meaning you could actually work in an office, you'd have enough skills to work in an office environment. And that's what they both did. So coming back though full circle, they though, once they had started working both of them actually went back to night school, and they got certificates. They never got degrees they got certificates. So my mother got a certificate in accounting and my father I think got his certificate in marketing. So again that was that was enough during their times to actually see a little bit of creeping up in terms of their opportunity to come in entry level and creep up a little bit. But for them, coming back to their culture they came from, it was very, everybody understood that if you became a degree person and you became a lawyer, a doctor, a pharmacist, an engineer, these were professions that were well recognized in the culture they came from as being successful, you know, degrees. So initially when I first started school my mother was really encouraging me to try to become a computer scientist because back then, computers had just emerged. So she recognized in the industry she was in that those people in her office who were computer literate and who could you know use a computer and that kind of stuff were clearly better off and she could see that the future would be that. So when I first got to college she was really encouraging me to do that. It never worked out for me, computer science but I took it. Student: Oh, you tried? Dwaine: Yeah. I just never, I just never, back then we actually had to do programing. So we would actually program something called Fortran, and this is a language that is probably dead by now. It was very very math oriented and I was never very great at math and it was very much into the actual programing by line, line product. Right now all that stuff that you use in computers has been written probably fifteen years ago by people, the DNA of those programs are still coming from my era, you see what I'm saying. So they'd have it built out, and so when we saw that guy playing that sophisticated game, if you go into the DNA of that game there are people like me, in my generation, not me, in my generation who actually designed that DNA coding and then since then it’s been built out to get a faster processor. Okay so my story is that I actually didn't leave home to go to college. So economically, because of the city I grew up in, the university itself was forty-five minutes away in terms of by car. Probably about hour and a half by bus, and I was lucky enough that my parents passed me down their old car. So I actually had a car when I was seventeen. And so by the time I got to college I had an old beat up car but it would get me to college nonetheless. The point is that I didn't actually leave home to go to college. So I didn't really have a sense of a guilty feeling that I was leaving people, like maybe you both experience that which is very different than I had to because every night, I’d go to the university every day and then at night I'd come home. So it was like a job in a sense. So it was a very different experience than you're probably having because you are probably living in residence, you're probably doing all those things, that trying to negotiate being connected to home still. Well I was always home in a sense. Student: Okay and then heading there, since you were like staying at home were there any concerns or fears like going in there and then like having to go home, go back, drive home, and do homework? Dwaine: Well I think the fears, I don't necessarily think there were fears, but it was definitely a different type of culture because living in a city of three million people, that's how big the city was, there was a culture where by that was very normal. We'd call ourselves the “commuters” to the university, there was a commuter culture.  So people would arrive to the university by bus, by car, and then at six o'clock in the evening. Student: Everybody goes.  Dwaine: Everyone's gone in a sense. There were still people living in residence, but they had a different culture meaning, they had a residents’ culture. It was fine, I actually met in my first couple of years, I met my ex-girlfriend, many many exes now, at university, she was actually in residence. So I actually got to know the residents’ culture because through her, I would actually hang around, and so I’d actually go to their events and that kind of stuff. So I actually had a moderated situation because I was actually able to do that with her. Student: Little bit of both. Dwaine: Little bit of both, yeah, but normally had I not met her and then that kind of thing, I would have only had that, I'd go and come back, use the library that kind of thing, so yeah it's different than you guys.