My college years were spent dreading the day I would be released into the American workforce, an act in itself a forerunner to depression. Although my experience and GPA may have looked good on paper, I knew in my heart that my employer, the keen eye that he’d have, would invariably figure out that I had learned nothing over my four years and kick me to the curb, asking me politelyas if a restaurantnever to come back to blue-collar America again. My colleagues would stand there, in their pressed suits and shiny shoes, looking out over the walls of their cubicles and whisper amongst themselves. “He wasn’t cut out for this,” they’d say. “The guy never even wore a suit”.
I’m 24 which, although it may seem young is over one hundred in dog years. I originally came to work in Panama after graduation because, as most innovative decisions are made, there was nothing better to do. I wouldn’t have fit in working nine to five and I certainly could not tolerate another Jersey winter of frost on the windshield or ice on the driveway. Panama was just a country with a Canal to me back thenevery one of its people, in my vision,...