I don’t cry easily. That doesn’t mean I’m not emotional. Just that I’m Irish. The drive across country was a wonderful experience. I enjoy solitude — and Interstate 70 offered me miles upon miles of it. As each mile receded behind me, I was leaving a well formed and comfortable image of Tom O’Neill. “Fr. Tom”: every 17 year old boy’s favorite Jesuit at Loyola High. It was true. And it was killing me.

Something new awaited me in New York. I wasn’t afraid of being on the other side of the desk again. School was something I knew how to do. But…

When I got to Pratt I was assigned a studio space in Steuben Hall. It turned out to be a large cubicle formed by four freshly painted white walls. The floor was covered and splattered with several years of paint. The traces of previous painter-pilgrims who had passed through the same halls and walls.

I began to unpack boxes of paint and supplies. Carried up several blank canvases that would soon be…well, something. But I had no idea what, just yet. Then I stopped and looked around. And broke into tears.

What was a doing here? I had no business being here. I was a fraud. It didn’t help that pretty much everyone who I met in my first days at Pratt were in their 20’s and full of energy, confidence and ready to take on the world. They were also freshly out of their undergraduate Fine Art programs and were well groomed and well honed in the latest verbiage and jargon of the art world. They were the gnostics who spoke a language of art in the new 21st Century — a language that was a mystery to me.

I was twice their age. I was teaching kids like them just two years ago. Put me behind a podium in front of 30 sophomores, and I’m an expert. A star.

Put me alone in my studio in Brooklyn. I’m a mess. And my tears confirmed it.