I am just so proud of this kid.

It was just 4 years ago or so that Scott was floundering a bit in high school. He had/has the brains, but he just didn’t have the motivation or interest for most academic subjects, at least the way they were being taught to him.

But he had shown a heck of a lot of aptitude for doing a bunch of mods to my car back in 2003 when we first got it, and that got him to take some automotive tech courses, and suddenly he was getting A grades. Susan and I both grew up in academic backgrounds, but we did not hesitate to encourage him to follow his own path…the one he not only desired, but was good at. And when he said he wanted to follow his dream to Universal Technical Institute, arguably the best school for automotive mechanics in the country, we supported him there too.

The decision to attend UTI was not taken lightly. Not only was there a serious financial commitment (I believe the proper term here is "a shitload of money"), but Scott would have to leave every day at 5 AM for classes…and this is a kid who used to have trouble with attendance and lateness. And UTI is very serious about attendance, because their full program takes 22 months of straight instuction — no languid summers off here — to get you the equivalent of 3 years’ schooling in just under 2. Individual courses are 3 intense weeks long, and if you miss more than one day, you have to take the entire course over.

Scott put his head down and never looked back. And when he graduated today, he had taken just about every course you could: Automotive Technology. Diesel. Industrial. And an optional Ford course (he has an entire binder full of Ford certificates). And he got on the Director’s List (like the Dean’s List) almost 20 times.

But the thing he wanted most was to be accepted in one of the prestigious MSAT courses, which prepare you for a career working with a specific manufacturer’s vehicles. And he set his sights high: he wanted no less than the BMW program, which is called STEP (Service Technician Education Program). And you can’t just decide to take it…they must choose you. And if they choose you, you’re essentially getting a full scholarship, because BMW pays for the whole thing.

So I’m doubly proud to announce that he will be starting BMW STEP training in August…as the only one in his entire graduating class to be accepted.

Congratulations to Scott…a wonderful, mature, hard working, and very talented young man.

(See all the pictures here).

Tags: automotive technology, BMW, family, mechanic, Scott Fiedler, UTI

When President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the usual suspects were all like “Wow! First woman Hispanic Hispanic female Latina woman from Puerto Rico!” and I was like “Cool, but what about Benjamin Cardozo?” Well, it turns out that ol’ Ben don’t qualify as Hispanic, as Lord Peter Wimsey might have said, because his antecedents were Portuguese, and that’s not Hispanic. However, it is Latino…and then again some people think that Cardozo’s family was originally Spanish, not Portuguese. But plenty of people wouldn’t count Cardozo as anything even remotely “Spanish” in origin, because he was Jewish, and hey, we’ve let lots of Jews onto the Supreme Court so now they’re no longer considered minorities any more.

So what’s the big deal about this stuff? Nothing! It’s just that some people get all excited about the “first this” and “first that” until the end result is that everyone is issuing press releases like the “first disabled lesbian Native American to be named CEO of a green renewable energy firm in the Midwest” or something. As far as I’m concerned, an announcement of this magnitude should be about someone’s qualifications and background, and all this minority rah-rah nonsense should be left for the last sentence in the last paragraph of the press release, if at all. But what do I know, I only spent 20 years as a journalist.

So what about her qualifications? Well, Judge Sotomayor is apparently a top-notch pick and more than just well qualified, having graduated summa cum laude from Princeton and having spent almost two decades as a respected Federal judge. No problem there. And I have nothing to say about any of her so-called “litmus test” beliefs — where people decide if they like a judge based on their “check the box” position on abortion, gun rights, free speech, death penalty, etc. — because apparently she hasn’t signaled one strong preference or another on these subjects in all this time. So that’s very good, because every case should be decided on its own merits, not as a rubber stamp based on a judge’s personal opinion.

My main concern with Judge Sotomayor is simply her reported viewpoint, given in a speech, that a “wise Latina woman” (sic), presumably herself, “would reach a better conclusion than a white male”.

Let’s pause here for a moment. Can you imagine any Supreme Court nominee in the last 25 years who wouldn’t have been totally demolished if they had said “a white male would reach a better conclusion than a [fill-in-the-blank minority]“? That sort of remark would be rightly considered as totally racist, and before anyone on either side of the aisle even considers confirming Judge Sotomayor, they ought to get a very clear answer from her on how she reconciles that kind of statement with her sworn duty to judge cases fairly…especially given her decision in Ricci v. DeStefano.