Ezekiel Kendrick

Student

“For me, learning has a lot to do with the comfort you feel about where you are. And SMC is definitely a real ‘university environment.’”

He was just coming off his best semester ever and feeling decidedly comfortable with himself and SMC. “Going to school, working, dealing with life’s little problems: I just haven’t had the time to really focus,” says Ezekiel Kendrick. “But this semester was a real turnaround for me, and a lot more fun than I expected.” It may be hard for many of us to believe, but the most “fun” Ezekiel had was studying the intricacies of the Japanese language.

“I’m going to transfer to the business school at NYU and then, when I’m back in California, I’d like very much to do business with the Japanese,” explains Ezekiel. “I’m pretty good with languages, so I wanted to take something that would challenge me. But Japanese turned out to actually be quite easy.”

Ezekiel will be the first to credit his teacher for the smooth way he’s becoming literate in Japanese. “Her name is Makiko Fujiwara-Skrobak, and she’s very interesting. She’s an absolutely excellent Japanese instructor,” says Ezekiel. “I was pretty intimidated by the language at first. But Makiko has incredible charisma that she shares with her students, and I attribute a lot of the success I’ve had to the way she conducted her class.”

Ezekiel also attributes his success to “150% confidence that I can accomplish anything I set out to do to improve my talents.” And one talent that he plans on sharpening soon is snowboarding. “I tried it once last year and was completely addicted,” he says with a laugh. “So I’m heading out to Colorado for another go at it. I may be the first African American guy on those slopes,” he says, “but I’ll just be the first of many to come.” 

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