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Then I walked by the interviewee, strode out of my office, and told Olivia to make sure to reschedule the interview.

Hopefully during a time when my family wasn’t falling apart.

Two

Emma

“Miss Gentry! Miss Gentry! What time is it?”

“Miss Gentry, can we color now?”

“Miss Gentry, can we go outside again and play?”

“Miss Gentry, what is this word?”

“Miss Gentry?”

“Miss Gentry.”

“Miss Gentry!”

Despite how many times I heard my name during the day, I adored my job. Lawrence Day School was San Francisco's most prestigious preschool. The best of the brightest students were enrolled here, and their parents paid a great deal of money for the best developmental education their child could obtain. And I employed a great deal of tactics to make sure all of my students were prepared for kindergarten. I saw it as an honor to have a major hand in raising the next generation of San Francisco’s elite, but that didn’t mean I was paid a great deal to do it.

Most of the funds the school raised went into expanding programs and adding additions to the building.

Not paying the staff what they deserved.

Every day after school, when the kids were picked up or shuffled onto their private buses, I went home to my shoebox apartment. No more than six hundred square feet and still costing me a fortune where I lived. My massive student loan debt took a chunk out of one of my paychecks a month, and the other paycheck was dedicated to rent. I wasn’t poor enough to get state assistance, but I wasn’t wealthy enough to meet my bills and eat anything other than noodles, canned fruit, and sauce for meals.

I loved my job and I loved the kids. But dealing with the snobbish, stuck-up parents with more money than God Himself was grating on my nerves.

San Francisco had a strict line between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’. I taught the children of the ‘haves’. The millionaires and the start-up gurus and the self-help venture capitalists. But I was a ‘have-not’. I made enough to get by and that was it. No savings account. No investments. No extra money to treat myself to things. Nothing. Rent, bills, dollar store food, medical insurance, and car insurance was all I could afford.

One of the things I implemented in my classrooms was trying to teach my kids that money wasn’t everything. It didn’t always solve problems and it couldn’t bring happiness. I tried to teach them that respect and compassion were more important, and more essential, in life than anything else. Government. Business. Education. Travel. All of these industries could benefit from more compassion and less of a money-hungry attitude.

I tried to teach them that material possessions weren’t everything while they carried Louis Vuitton backpacks on their backs.

And sometimes I felt like I was losing an unwinnable war.

But, I did have one student that seemed to be latching onto the concept. One whose speech was well beyond her years as well a

s her mathematical capabilities.

Zoey Aaron.

She was the daughter of the famed pharmaceutical legend, Valentina Aaron. A single mother and the wealthiest woman in the country, she found the kind of success her mother could have never dreamt of. She inherited her mother’s failing pharmaceutical company and all its debts since she was the oldest child in her family. But instead of liquidating and selling off the assets and patents to pay everything off and start fresh, she took on the quickest-tanking medical company and turned it into a multi-billion-dollar symbol of hope around the world.

She was an inspiration, and a woman I frequently referenced in my lectures to the children at the end of the day.

Valentina was an icon. A woman who adored her family, rose from the ashes of a failed marriage, and went on to become a billion-dollar woman before she turned forty. She frequently donated medical supplies by the tons to third-world countries and made hefty donations every year to charities around the globe that supported everything from feeding children to building fresh water wells for villages in Africa.

She was the epitome of someone who could have success as well as compassion, and I wanted my preschool kids to look up to her.

At least, I wanted them to look up to the woman she was in her younger years.

With that kind of life and dedication came its hardships and secrets. The high-class community of San Francisco saw a great deal of substance abuse. The stress from their businesses and the constant shuffling between families that needed them and employees that needed them forced a lot of these parents to turn to other coping mechanisms. Sex with other people. Fetish parties. Alcohol. Drugs.

The only difference was that Valentina’s failures were as highly publicized as her successes.


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