Thread by @AndyKimNJ

Last night @60Minutes did segment on a college I attended that has only 26students doing manual labor on a cattle ranch while studying great books. Deep Springs College. This improbable place is where my journey to Congress began. My story and photos I’ve never shared belowTHREAD

I applied to Deep Springs without my parents knowing. My sister told me about a school next to Death Valley where students ride horses, hire professors, and run admissions to select next class of students. 13 students get accepted a year for 2yrs. Everyone goes for free.2/15

The school is premised on the belief that education isn’t just in the classroom. I learned as much from operating the dairy (milking cows, churning butter, making yogurt/ice cream) and growing our own vegetables as I did studying history, philosophy and literature.3/15

School is run by the students in a democracy. We gather Friday nights in the boarding house to introduce resolutions and proposals to govern our community. We learn to build coalitions and support amongst the students. Been student run for over 100 yrs.4/15

Deep Springs is different from other schools in that it has a clear mission to train students to be of “Service to Humanity.” We as students talked about the idea of “service” all the time. What it meant to be of service. But I learned it in a life changing way on Sept 11. 5/15

Sept 11 2001: I woke up before the sun to harvest late season tomatoes and vegetables from the garden. When I got to the boarding house for breakfast, another student told me about how a plane hit the World Trade Center. We assumed it was small cessna-like plane by accident.6/15

When I learned what happened, I wanted to go home to NJ immediately. I was so angry and being in the middle of the desert on a cattle ranch on the other side of the country was awful. I felt disconnected, and for the first time, the physical isolation finally came down on me.7/15

A few weeks later I took some time to go to NYC and walked around the perimeter of Ground Zero. I snapped this photo as I saw the rubble with my own eyes and the incredible people conducting the recovery. I thought about staying to help and never going back to Deep Springs.8/15

Ultimately, I did return to the desert valley. I realized I needed more training and that it’s better to act out of purpose rather than anger. Deep Springs trained me to use “service to humanity” as my guiding principle and to dedicate my life to stopping preventable deaths.9/15

Deep Springs demonstrates the power of education, but also the need for education to teach more than books. I learned not just knowledge, but how to engage and interact with the people around me. How to communicate effectively and how to work as a team.10/15

I also learned how to solve problems and find solutions creatively. I learned to build a fence with just bailing wire and a leatherman. Fix tractors and irrigation lines. If I didn’t know how to weld, I needed to learn. 11/15

Most importantly, I internalized what it means to be of “service to humanity.” What I learned was that service requires a simple yet profound recognition that we are members of a community. We have responsibilities to each other that require mutual respect in order to work.12/15

But it isn’t just “service to each other” or “service to community”. Service to humanity requires a recognition that we are a part of something bigger, we are connected to one another, and we should never let political identity or other divisions cloud our shared humanity.13/15

Someone once asked me what impact Deep Springs had on my life. I said the highest compliment I could give is that Deep Springs is the only place I’ve ever been in my life where I could say that I would be a completely different person had I not been there.14/15

I arrived at Deep Springs only thinking about what’s best for me, but I left the valley committed to foreign policy and public service. I never would have become a U.S. Congressman were it not for Deep Springs and the beautiful lessons of service I learned in the desert.END