
Jun 10, 2022, 7:38 AM
Eli Castro and Tracy Locke Castro Bring Their Johnnie Perspective to Life
Eli Castro (SF94) and Tracy Locke Castro (SF95) created a life and a legacy from their pursuit of knowledge of the Great Books at St. John’s College.
Eli Castro (SF94) and Tracy Locke Castro (SF95) created a life and a legacy from their pursuit of knowledge of the Great Books at St. John’s College.
Avi Kumar (A21) is one of the lucky ones. He always knew his life path, and that knowledge—illuminated by a St. John’s education—gave him the clarity, persistence, and skills to be accepted at Stanford Law School. Kumar says he owes his collegiate and professional success to the “intensive education” he received at St. John’s College. “You really can do anything with this degree,” he adds.
Jason Gots (EC96) is a writer, musician, and podcast producer who lectures in Columbia University’s Graduate School of the Arts’ writing department. After studying acting at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, he earned an Eastern Classics degree from St. John’s and a master’s in developmental psychology from Columbia. Here he discusses his memoir, Humanity is Trying, which was released by HarperCollins/Hanover Square Press on March 1, 2022 and chronicles (among other things) the loss of his sister Meri Gots (SF97), who died in 2015.
I think that’s a St. John’s trait—that you never stop learning and that there are always things that you can learn from. I always tell folks that the greatest lesson that I got from my St. John’s experience is there’s nothing I can’t think about.
“I love taking apart things that aren’t working and putting them back together again,” says Phelosha Collaros (SF00). Since becoming the St. John’s College Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations in 2016, she has done exactly that: revamping two college-wide departments and creating another from scratch, all while staff and budgets were being downsized.