Bob Brick and Sunny Hwang

00:00 So we talked a lot about when we've been meeting what our passions are, and I'd love to hear your story about what you specifically are passionate about and about your journey so far to realize that passion.

00:16 I would say my passion is art and specifically fine arts, but I recently have branched out to other forms like dancing, and I do embrace this a lot. I have done art fine arts competitively since second grade, and I've actually been an annual gold key recipient of the Scholastic Arts and Writings awards since 2013. And this kind of stopped in high school, but I'll get more into that. And I think it's because in college I stopped doing it just because it took a lot of time and effort and a lot of money and space to even continue doing fine arts. So it wasn't very possible to do it in college with a limited amount of space, limited amount of money, and just resources in general for myself. But I did end up joining an organization called the Korean Student Association KSA on campus. And the the first year I joined, I was a photographer, so I was still able to get that creative side of me out that way. And then the second year I joined, which is this year, actually, I'm the co publicist right now, which means that I make graphics for this organization and post it on Instagram and any other social media platforms to just get our organization out there, introduce new events that we're holding and hosting, and I continue to do digital art and post on my Instagram hobby page. So these are different ways that I decided to continue my fine arts journey. And then aside from that, when I decided to branch out, I joined a dance work on campus called DBJ. And then I also decided to start a small jewelry business for a little bit during COVID during the pandemic in order to fund different donation sites that helped other families relieve. I think it was like the COVID relief. There were a lot of donations and platforms that I could donate to, but I didn't have an income. So this was my way of really just using my creativity and art like passion and art to kind of put into give back to the community, basically. And I honestly didn't appreciate fine arts or any type of art until high school. I think even though I did this in second grade, in middle school and in elementary school, it felt more like a chore and like a class because I did go to art classes and academies after school, and I felt like it wasn't very suited for me. And in high school, I actually switched to a smaller studio based art program that one of my favorite art instructors have founded and was leading. And I really liked her teaching style. I think that other art teachers in the past would sometimes take my place as the artist and make changes to my artwork to fit more of their style and their artwork more than my style, and respecting my boundaries and my artistic visions. And this art instructor actually helped me find my style and let me be as creative as I want, while also teaching me valuable art skills and the technical skills that come into art. So since high school, I realized that art was my place of comfort and consistency. And this was really valuable to me because I moved around so frequently throughout my life that my environment was constantly changing, and I felt like art was the only thing that I can always go back to, and it would be the same. And how much improved really only depended on me and how much time I put in. So this new piece that I found in art kind of stuck with me, and it never went away. And I think that's why I really find art as my passion. And I think that's where I am in the journey right now, where I'm still trying to continue this art by doing digital art. But I think I do want to go back to the physical using soft pastels and acrylics, which were my favorite mediums in high school. And, yeah, that's where I'm at the journey right now. I just want to go back into it, but I'm at a place where I'm not really able to do that right now.

04:46 So I know we've talked about you in terms of a career, looking at a career in Madison, and so I'm curious. I always wonder, how are you going to keep your passion as part of your life? Usually art is not a part of what medical people get to do. So how are you going to continue to do that, make art? It's your passion. How it's going to be part of your life the rest of your life, do you think?

05:10 Right. I think with this passion, it'll be more like a hobby. I think it's really important for everyone to have hobbies. And I would say, I know I'll be really busy if and when I'm in medical school, and just every step of the way, starting there. But I think once I have my own space, or even if I go back home, I'll still have a space to do art, make art And even if I have to do it digitally for a little bit, I think that's okay with me. And if anything, I've been incorporating art into a lot of my studies as well, especially when it comes to stem courses like biology. I love drawing things out and explaining it to myself by drawing out the different pathways, and I think I have a lot of fun doing that. And although it's not very technical and very artistic or creative, it's definitely still a way for me to incorporate my artwork into my studies. So I think that could be another way to kind of continue that along with my medical journey. And I think art will definitely be more like a stress relief relieving type of activity.

06:21 Uh huh. Well, yeah, and that sounds like a great idea. And I'm curious if you can see any ways actually use your art in your, in your medical career, not just as a side hobby, because you, in my experience, your passion should be the center of your life. Right. So, I mean, is there a way you could imagine that it would be part of your medical practice?

06:44 For now, I don't know too much about the different fields of medicine, but I know from what I know right now, I've always been interested in plastic surgery, whether that be actual plastic surgery like reconstructive surgery or cosmetic surgery, or even dermatology. And I think a lot of that actually comes with a good artistic vision. When it comes to plastic surgery or reconstructive surgery, you kind of have to study the anatomy of a person and see how that really works with a person specific to each individual, rather than just a person itself or just people in general. And I think I could incorporate my passion into that. Or even with cosmetic surgery, there are obviously different trends and, um, features that people, uh, look up to or want to have. And I think those are different ways that I can also, um, incorporate my passion into.

07:43 Yeah, that sounds great.

07:45 So, Bob, what are your pat, what are you passionate about, and what was your journey like finding this passion, and how did you embrace it?

07:55 Good. Yeah. Well, so my path I discovered in high school that I love two things I loved the most was education and the arts, especially, much more the performance arts, you know, and once I had this transitional moment in high school where I sort of came out of my very shy shell, I was involved in all the plays, you know, and all that kind of performance art that was available at a high school, and I continued that on later. Interestingly, in my life, even though those were clearly my passions, I took a very, very long detour, as some people do in life. I did almost everything else. I had lots of judgements, but they were almost all based in being an administrative person, usually the top administrative person in providing community mental health. And I ran large community mental health centers, alcohol and drug counseling centers, all those kinds of things as I got into my forties. So this is a 20 year detour. It's a long detour for my passion. I found myself hating the work I was doing. Big insurance companies had gotten into the game, and long story shorter felt like all the decisions I was making were to not give people care, cutting people off from care that really needed, and I didn't want to do that anymore. So I found myself at the 45 years old without a job. And I said, it's time for me to do something really different. And my passion didn't come to mind. I don't know why, but I decided it was something totally different. I would work with my hands. I would become a sheet rocker. I would learn how to hang sheet rock and mud, the finishing work. And I was going to train myself by doing a room in my house. And God, thank God I didn't end up becoming that because I was awful at it. But I had decided that I was going to train myself for three months doing rooms and then get a job in construction, as far away from what I had been doing in my life and as far away from my passion as it could possibly be. And that summer, my youngest child, my son, was in a nature summer camp, and we had the family cookout the last night, and we were sitting around the fire, and this person that I knew from my mental health life worked for the Department of Mental Health, came over and was talking to me, and he said, I heard you don't have a job. You're not working. And I said, yeah, that's right. I'm thinking about doing something really different. And he said, you know, you should call this person. I guess I probably shouldn't use her name now, but someone I had worked with previously said, she has all these creative ideas. You ought to get together with her for lunch. And I said, oh, that's a great idea. Yeah, thanks. Thanks. I didn't know that she was out there looking around, and I went home thinking, I have no interest in that, and I'm going to be a sheet rocker. I don't want any creative ideas. Well, this individual went home and called the other person and said, you know, I just saw Bob Brick and he's without a job, and you have all these creative ideas. Why don't you call him and get together and talk about all these things you might like to do? And so she did. She called me the next morning and I said, sure, I'd love to get together with your lunch and listen to your ideas. That would be really fun. I'd love to support them, but I want to be honest with you. I have no interest in them. I'm going to Sheetrock. And, you know, I was really definite about this crazy idea. And thank goodness the universe had something different for me in mind. And, you know, in the end of all this, the lesson that I learned from it is that sometimes you have to listen. When the universe tells you something, you have to be open to it. I'm not a religious person, but I'm a very spiritual person. I believe there are connections, and, boy, this connection was really strong and really definitive because we got together for lunch and she shared, I'm going to say, I say 15 ideas. Her memory is 18 ideas. We wrote them all down on the napkin. I wish I still had the napkin. I was really positive and supportive of many ideas she had told me, but said I wasn't really interested. I wanted a sheet rock. And then we were getting up, we had paid the bill. About to leave, she said, you know, bob, I have one more idea. I said, what's that? And she said, well, she said, you may not even know this about me. She said, but I went to the fame performing arts school. I was a visual artist, but I went to that school, and I've always wanted to create a school for the arts. And it was just this amazing moment for me, even though I still was thinking I wanted to be a sheet rocker, I said, oh, wow, wait a minute. That's different. That's something I always dreamed about, is running an art school. And she said to me, nobody. That's what I've always dreamed about about. And it turned out we had the exact same dream. And we literally drove back to my house to get a telephone. This is kind of before people had. Cell phones were not ubiquitous. They were this big at that time. And you carried around. And we called the department of education in Massachusetts, and we had heard about this thing called charter schools, where you could propose to make independent but public schools that would be available. And we said, we have this idea to do a performing arts school. And actually, before we told them that, we said, we have this idea, we want to apply. What's the process? And they said, well, we want to be honest. There are only three more charters left in the state of Massachusetts out of the original 25 that were authorized, and there were 28 applicants for those three, they were involved. Last year, they got turned down. One of them is the Harvard School of education. One of them, they went through this list and said, you're probably not going to have a great chance. He said, but what's your idea? And we pitched our idea. We said, we want to do a performing arts high school here in western Massachusetts, and we want to integrate the performance arts into the ways we teach academics. And he said, whoa, wait a minute. That's really different. That's really exciting. And I think the commissioner would be really interested in that. You should put together an application. And it was the beginning of this incredible force of the universe pushing me towards my passion. So we sat down and began calling everybody we knew for the next week about our idea. And literally every person we spoke to said, that's the most amazing idea. We need this. How can I help? It was just. It was magic. And they wanted to be on the board, and they wanted to help, and they wanted to donate money, and they wanted to do all these things. And so we kept doing this and doing this. The universe kept pushing us towards this. But we still had a compete with 28 other applications from some very prestigious institutions. And I remember the day we had to go to Boston in early February to make an oral argument to defend our proposal. And by this time, I had already. You can't just listen to the university after app. By this time, I had already become the interim director of another charter school that had opened the year before out in Williamsburg, called Hilltown Charter School. And they had needed a director in the middle of the year. And I said, look, I have all these skills, but. And I would love to come and help you for a few months, but I'm going to leave at the end because we're going to. I believe that we're going to have our own school for me to lead. And they didn't believe that, but I. So I already had this as a background. I was working, oh, maybe five or six or seven weeks for them already. Anyhow, the morning of our defense in Boston, there was a just. It was snowing so hard that it was like a blizzard. And we had 2 hours to drive. And I had to pick up this other person I worked with out in Belcher to live way out in the country on this dirt road. And somehow I got to her and we got in. I said, what should we do? The driving conditions are awful. And she looked at me, she said, the world needs this school. The universe is telling us to do it. Nothing can stop us. We need to go. So we drove. And I'm terrified of driving in the snow, but we drove to bus and we showed up at their office at 1030 in the morning. And when we walked in the door, they said, what in the world are you doing here? He said, well, we have an appointment for our interview to defend our proposal. And they said, yeah, but it's a horrible blizzard. It's already snowed like eight or ten inches, and all the local people in the area have cancelled. Even people in the Harvard people were in Cambridge, which is 5 miles away, canceled. And he said, well, this is too important. We said, the world needs this. This is our great passion. Nothing's going to stop us from making this happen. And they, I believe to this day that's what got us in the end. They knew that there were two people that were not going to let this thing fail. They were going to make this happen. And three weeks later, they picked us to be a new charter school. And this was already march. And magically, most charter schools took a year and a half to open. But we opened that next September. We went looking for a building in Hadley, and we were, there was a mall that was empty there. We thought, this will be perfect. We'll be able to grow in the mall. And we met to meet with the building inspector, and the building inspector said, you know, the mall is awesome. It's going to cost you millions of dollars. But you know what? We have two old school buildings and I think the town might like to rent them to you. And again, long story short, they did. And they did for such a cheap price. It's what made us financially viable for the next few years. Again, just magic kept happening. It was meant to be. And I fell into this passion that I had had my whole life. And for the next 15 years, I built that school and led that school. And I'm glad I enjoyed. It was just the most fun to have my actual passion be part of my everyday life. I got to be on stage. I got to watch performance artists and visual artists do their work all the time. I got to feel like we had created an educational institution that would last forever. It's now 27 years old, the school, it still graduates a class of 60 or 70 kids every year, a lot of them who were very successful in the arts. So I was very lucky. The way I got there is the universe kicked me in the butt. And so you're going to do this whether you want to or not. And again, with the help of this friend that helped me create the school, learn the lesson about listening, listen to what the world is telling you to do and go with that flow. So, again, I was very lucky, and I got to do that passion for, again for the next 15 years. We then started another school in inner city Holyoke. I was only able to stay three years because of some health issues, but that was a wonderful experience, too. The only sad part is that now I don't feel like I have that connection to the arts anymore. Being retired, I really miss that, and I'm trying to find a way to replace that, and I'm waiting for the universe to tell me how to do that. So that's my story.

19:18 That's actually a really wonderful story. And you talk a lot about how you felt like it was meant to be and how the universe was almost, like, guiding you and pushing you. But I think we really can't dismiss all the hard work that you also put in to make this possible.

19:33 Right, right.

19:34 And I think that's so important.

19:36 It is both. I mean, it's really true. I didn't even tell you. In the summer of the first year, before we were about to open, I literally got a. This is three months after we got the charter. I got a phone call from a person that said, hi, my name is. I don't remember. I represent people of great wealth. We read about your charter school in the newspaper, and this person would like to meet with you and talk about funding the school. And this person wrote a six figure check every year for the first ten years of the school, and they. They literally fell out of the sky on us. I mean, this was meant to be, and I was. I consider myself very, very lucky, and. But you're right. Hard work, too. I worked twelve to 14 hours, six and a half days a week for three years to get this up and going. That's how hard we worked. It was. But it was the best thing. You know what they say, if you're doing what you love, you never work a day in your life. It's really true. It never felt like work. It felt wonderful. So, yeah, that's amazing.

20:39 It makes me wonder if I'll ever find something like that, too, where it doesn't feel like work and almost feels like, you know, I'm having all a lot of fun doing it, and hopefully the path that I'm trying to go into is something like that. But I also had a question.

20:53 Yeah, no, you go ahead.

20:55 Yeah, you said that, you know, how you talked about how it took, like, a 20 year detour to get here and, like, start your passion. Do you think that if you didn't take the detour and you found your passion right away and you didn't need that 20 years. Do you think it would have been beneficial or do you think it would have hit you the same. The same way it did now? Or do you would. If you were to redo it again, would you still take that 20 years and to figure it out?

21:25 Great question. Yeah, no, I think those 20 years was what had to be. I think it trained me. I learned every skill I needed. You know, I did my undergraduate and graduate work in education, but then I didn't end up being an educator. And I needed to learn a lot of things. I needed to learn about buildings. I ran 200 units of low income public housing in Springfield and did the reconstruction. I needed to know all of that. You know, I had staffs of 125 people, professionals, and I had to learn all about human resources. I mean, it was definitely. It never could have happened until the moment that it happened. And I felt like that was my 20 year internship, if you will. And. Yeah, no, and I have no. I mean, I didn't like. As I said earlier, I didn't like some of what I ended up doing in that. But it had to be, you know, I mean, you know, it's a weird thing for me. I don't believe in fate, but I do believe there are these connections, and if you listen, you know, and pay attention, you find those connections to your passion. And again, I think I was very lucky, but that. That was the way it needed to be. And, yeah, we worked really hard, but it also was. It had. It had to be, and I just got picked to do it, and I was very, very lucky that I got picked to do it. So. And I hope that for you, too. And, you know, so remember to keep your eyes and ears open. What's the world telling you? I think I told you that my parents wanted me to be a doctor. I was pre med the first two years at UMass, and that is not what my life was going to be. I kind of realized along the way that it was more their passion and not my passion, but, you know, and I bump into ex students all the time who aren't practicing their art. Maybe they're just doing it now as a hobby. Maybe they're not doing it at all. But I always ask them, I said, that was your passion then, you know, how do you. How do you keep it in your life? How do you include it now? How do you make. And many of them are lucky. They are in the arts, which is, as you know, a difficult life to make a living at so that's one of the problems. But, you know, it's so important how many people can say, I spent my life, you know, working at doing the thing that I love the most. I don't think most people can. It's a very lucky person who gets to do that. Like I said, I consider myself very, very fortunate. So I hope you. I hope that happens for you as well.

23:58 Right? I hope so, too. And as of now, I have definitely, so many people during my college years have told me, yes, definitely keep an eye out, keep an open mind, keep an open ear. And I think I really have been. But there's just nothing else that I'm pulled towards or attracted to more than premed. And actually, my parents kind of stopped me at some point from pursuing medicine because they told me, why are you choosing such a difficult path that requires so much schooling and so many hours? And it took a lot of convincing, actually. And sometimes they still question me. They're like, are you sure? Are you sure you want this? And I think that actually helps me. Whenever they ask me, it makes me rethink this. And then every time I think about it, every time they ask me, I'm actually even more passionate about this than I was before. So I'm glad I have people questioning this for me in my life so that I don't have to do that myself.

25:01 Yeah. You know, it's funny because my middle, my middle daughter, who's a nurse practitioner now, you know, she went to Smith as an undergraduate, as an education major, sort of following in my footsteps. That wasn't her passion. And we begged her to take some science and some math and just in case. And she said, I won't need that and this and that. And then after you actually got a job in education and working with youth, and then within a year, she had to go back to school because she knew what her passion was. It was medicine. She did, she had to do two years, well, a year and a half of math and science classes, so then she could then apply and get into nursing school, and then she did nursing school, and then she did her masters in nursing. And so she did ten years of education to get to her passion. But it's clearly who she was meant to be. And she's a wonderful practitioner. No, but nurse practitioners are very similar to the doctors. They can prescribe medication and in some states, they don't even need a doctor's supervision. And they get a much more compassionate person to person training than most MD programs, although I think those are changing, too now so, yeah, I mean, it was kind of the opposite for her, but she found it. Thank goodness. So all my kids have found their passion, which is really nice. Each of them loves their job. And, you know, when I told you I work 70, 80 hours a week, which is really true. Never felt like that. It never felt like I was working that kind felt like I was doing while my life was meant to be, you know? So I hope, I think you'll. I think you'll find that you're. You're really. You're very. You have a great introspection. You have a great sense of who you are. You know, you need. You need to get a little life experience beyond school, which will be coming up for you too fast sometimes. Right. And, yeah, keep your eyes and ears open and find ways to keep your art as part of your life, too. And that. That'll be a great life. That'll be magical for you. So that would be great. Good.

27:14 Looking forward to what's out there for me.

27:18 Yeah. So good.