Camera Roll with Anne Gomez Rubin
Camera roll is an interview series where we glimpse into the current moment via the mundane and the ordinary; the life lived in this moment of a global pandemic.
Anne Gomez Rubin is a lifelong teacher who—for the first time in her career—is taking on a new role in school administration. She speaks to us about how exciting it is to watch young people learn and grow, her newfound obsession with perfume, and why her forties are her best decade yet.
Where are you right now?
I'm in Palo Alto, California.
What’s your morning routine?
I'm the child of an immigrant, so I'm incapable of sleeping in. I like the idea of lounging in bed, but as soon as I wake up, I'm ready to go. I typically listen to a podcast like The Daily from the NYTimes. This morning, I was really happy to see a new episode of "You're Wrong About," which is one of my favorites. Then it's coffee and a check-in with my tomato plants. On a good day, by the time I wake up, my friend Beth has already texted me a link to some article she wants to talk about.
Tell us a little bit about your background and journey.
I was raised by two complicated people who experienced trauma and didn't necessarily have the tools to help themselves navigate through it. I was born when my mom was only 20 years old, and my dad was 23. I was raised in a pretty free-range environment out of necessity, which made me resourceful and independent.
Now that I'm raising my own child, who is nine, I have my own work that I need to do around generational trauma. I'm grateful to have the luxury of language and tools to help me evolve my sense of self as I shake off the emotional baggage that does not belong to me. My job is not to do what the other women or people of color before me couldn't do. My job is to build a life that I love and to care for the people who cross my path.
How did you get into the field of education, and what has your trajectory been like?
I have always known I would be an English teacher! It never occurred to me to do anything else. I did Teach for America after I graduated from college in 2001, and then I had planned to become a professor. I started a Ph.D. program in English at the University of Chicago, but I left after a year because it was a terrible match for my personality. I can think at a really high level, but I'm also playful and a little impish, and I felt like going through the process of doing Ph.D. work seemed so dull and joyless. There was something about the intellectual posturing that was mortifying to watch, so I left and ended up getting an M.A. in teaching from Michigan. I never regretted leaving my Ph.D. program for a second. I do regret the time I wasted thinking that being in a Ph.D. program made me smart.
This is the first year in my career that I will not be teaching. I'm the new head of upper school at the Castilleja School in Palo Alto, California. If you had told me that I would end up being a school administrator when I started teaching, I never would have believed you.
How does your relationship with your own child differ from your relationships with your students?
With students, it's much easier to manage my expectations. I can see them as people who are growing and changing, and that in that process, they make mistakes. My sense of value is not tied to them at all. I feel proud when they succeed, and when they have setbacks, I feel for them, but I know that their pain is temporary. I feel excited that they get to experience all the heartbreak and mess and joy of becoming adults. Working in a school lets me witness that all day long, and it feels pretty sacred.
With my son, it's completely different. Raising him to be a good man is the most important thing I will ever do, and when I feel like I'm not doing that well, I have a strong sense of failure.
What excites you most about the future of education?
The fact that adults are thinking hard about the kind of places we want school to be. We're asking good questions about old systems, and we are invested in approaching problems with less ego because we have our focus on the kids in our care. There is much less attachment to the way things have been, and in independent schools, I see an incredible eagerness to create more equitable systems from top to bottom. It's messy, imperfect, and exhausting, but I'm so inspired by how I see people approaching the conversation and wanting to lean into the work.
Any advice for those with aspirations to teach?
All good teaching is about relationships. When I was a young teacher, I was all about content. Now I'm all about people. Content comes and goes, skills wax and wane, but people do not forget relationships.
Which phase of your life has been your favorite?
I hate saying that this current one is my favorite phase, but it's true. I'm certain of who I am, but I still surprise myself, and at the same time, I have the flexibility to accept however I show up. There have been moments when something unexpected has emerged in me, and they have forced me to figure out how to appreciate my complexity. The other option is to feel mortification and shame, and that doesn't feel sustainable at 43.
What does writing mean to you?
Writing has always been a means of inquiry for me. I never have a fully formed idea before I sit down to write, and when I write, my ideas evolve. I've always been a writer; I have long-term professional and creative projects that I have been working on for a while. One of them is called Domestic Conjecture, and it's housed on Instagram. It's a flash fiction project that I started in 2017 that connects houses in Minneapolis and St. Paul with short pieces of fiction that I write.
What did you do during quarantine that you hadn't before?
I'm meditating now. I did it periodically in moments of stress before the pandemic, but now, I do it every day. Guided meditations are my jam.
My biggest shift has been in my interest in perfume. Before the pandemic, I just wanted to smell like limeade, but I discovered Rachel Syme's Twitter, and I got deep into her recurring Perfume Genie threads. I started ordering samples from Lucky Scent, and I became addicted to getting a handful of perfume vials in the mail every other week. This was a solitary activity, but I ended up bonding over it with my friend Mike, who is a biologist. We were never really close before this last year, but it became our thing to smell scents together in my office and try to parse out the notes together. We are close friends now.
I no longer want to smell like limeade, and I'm really into woody scents. My favorites are Hinoki by Commes des Garçons x Monocle, Mississippi Medicine by D.S. & Durga. My desert island scent is called A Rose of No Man's Land by Byredo. It's a juicy rose that smells like a woman's closet in the 1940s.
How are you sustaining connection and interacting with people during this time?
Truthfully, it's hard. I'm, by nature, an introvert. I have a pretty small circle of close friends, and I'm also a person who struggles with texting back. My brain is too full sometimes.
What are your skincare and haircare routines?
I am a pretty minimal person when it comes to my skin. I use Sunday Riley's Tidal brightening moisturizer in the morning, and at night I use Luna Sleeping Oil from the same brand. In the mornings, I am all about eyebrows and eyeliner, but honestly, that's all I can handle.
My very curly hair takes up a lot of my real estate in the mornings, like every other person with curly hair. In the summer, I wash every other day with the Terrace Garden bar from Viori, and my favorite conditioner right now is Power by Lush, which I use as a leave-in. I dry my hair upside down with a t-shirt, and then I add a very small amount of gel from Pattern. For most of my life, I wore my hair straight, and it's taken a long time to embrace these unpredictable curls.
What's been inspiring you?
Right now, I am deep into color saturation. I can't get enough of Josef Albers, Helen Frankenthaler, and Luis Barragán. I have a bunch of saved images of the signage from the '68 Olympics in Mexico City that are a vacation for the eyes. I'm also loving anything made by Ruth Mora.
What are you listening to?
I am deep into Jubilee, the newish album by Japanese Breakfast. I just finished her book, Crying in H Mart (by Japanese Breakfast Club’s Michelle Zauner), and I think she's just a gorgeous thinker. I'm emerging from a dark period of listening to too much Billie Holiday.
What are you watching?
My friend Joe and I are watching Veneno on HBO Max and have been texting each other about the clothes every night. It's an amazing series, and I will be crushed when I finish it.
what are you drinking?
Water, always, but coffee and kombucha are my passion. While my kombucha is always Health-Ade’s passion fruit-tangerine flavor, my coffee varies because I'm a brat when it comes to what I like. I love PT's Flatlander blend, and I'm always looking for a good Ethiopian coffee with big blueberry notes. We've just discovered Verve here, and we love their Wilder blend. I'm flexible about most things but not about beverages.
Favorite things you’ve bought in the past year?
So many things. I have purchased a few sets from Arq, and at this point, it's all I wear. They are incredibly comfortable. I have a great bar lotion from Nopalera that I love. We moved and ended up buying a wonderful new couch from Article. We're going through a big midlife mid-century modern phase right now. My last big purchase for myself was these earrings from Annie Costello Brown.
images provided by anne gomez rubin