Altruistic, creative, pragmatic, and sharp are just a few words used by students to describe Lloyd Aquino, professor of English composition and literature, creative writing club advisor, and writer.
“Professor Aquino is one of the best professors I have had, he is dedicated to his students, he focuses all his time and energy into making class lectures and discussions fun and interesting, as well as helping students relate it back to similar situations in present day,” said Crystal Ibarra, 27, honor student, engineering major and psychology club treasurer.
“He is one of those professors you are actually saddened when you arrive to your class and there’s a sign in sheet taped to the door,” she added.
Aquino, 32, has been teaching at Mt.SAC for seven years and it is his fifth year as a full timer. Aquino started teaching at California Polytechnic State University while he was in a graduate school program working on his masters. The Teaching Associate Program, according to him, allows aspiring teachers to teach a class every quarter while still taking classes; he did this for two years. He previously taught part time at California State University Fullerton. Aquino has always taught English composition and literature, but mostly composition.
Aquino is more than just an English professor; he has been the adviser for the creative writing club for the past two years. “I love the students here, their writing is very impressive, I have taught at four year universities and I have had more students blow me away here than at Cal Poly, I love working in this department,” he said.
English professor John Brantignham has known Aquino for six years and said that he has come to admire him as both a writer and teacher. “I have grown tremendously through his example and in our conversations, I am also knocked out by his poetry, which is rhythmic and visual,” he said.
The creative writing club has been around for nearly six years. Advisers take the club members through activities based on writing fiction, poetry, and other creative writing activities. They perform open mic readings, and last year they created their on first literary magazine “Creepy Gnome,” and are currently working on their second one. The magazine is available on lulu.com.
Dylan Gosland, 22, English Major and president of the Creative Writing Club, and editor in chief of Mt. SAC’s Creepy Gnome Magazine said, “I consider Lloyd a friend and valued colleague. Guy’s got a killer sense of humor, and is extremely dedicated to his students and craft.”
Aquino has been writing for about 11 years and has written a couple of plays and short stories, but primarily, he considers himself a poet. Videos of his poetry readings can be found on YouTube and he has had about 25 poems published in various places. He hopes to publish a collection of his poems.
“My primary interest at this point is going to poetry readings and performing, I just love reading my poetry in front of people. It took me a while to work up the courage to get up there, but once I did it became addicting, and now I can’t stop,” he said.
During his free time, he and a few others have their own organization where they arrange their own readings. Their goal is to bring poetry and arts to the local community. Every third Saturday of the month, the owner of the independent bookstore The Village Book Shop in Glendora, hosts a reading, and Aquino often participates.
“I feel like I’m in control when I’m up there, in way that I don’t when I’m at party or get together,” he said.
Aquino primarily writes about relationships, not just romantic ones, but all kind of relationships. He added that he has been writing a lot more about family and how one relates to each other in both good and bad ways. “I love to write about those little seemingly insignificant moments in life and try to make them bigger. What interest me as a poet are the details, not so much the big picture, which are the little things that make life interesting,” he said.
Aside from teaching and writing, he likes to listen to music and go to plays. He said he is more of a stay-at-home person and that might be a good thing as a professor, because there is always a paper to grade.
“I want to keep writing, I want to keep teaching, and as long as I can do that then I think I’m going to be happy,” he said. In the near future he plans to travel to London to see some plays and has plans to visit New York during his vacation. His students see him as a positive role model.
“Lloyd has been a very positive influence on me as a student, serving as an unwitting role model and motivator. He has demonstrated that it is possible to do what you love and not have to compromise your happiness, that one can make baby steps towards a rewarding career in creative writing, and showed me how through example,” Gosland said.
With the good comes the bad, Aquino said there are things that make teaching tough, like when a student is not participating and not fully dedicated to the work that they are supposed to be doing.
“I can deal with the students and I love working with students who are trying their hardest but just need to keep working at it, and I can deal and work with that frustration, but it’s the students who make no effort to hide the fact that they don’t want to be there that can really drain me.”
Ibarra said he has really helped her improve.
“Before having Professor Aquino as a professor I lacked the writing skills needed to succeed, and after taking his classes my writing improved. He is very dedicated to his students and wishes nothing more than for them to succeed,” Ibarra said.
Aquino said that there are two different types of tired in days worth of teaching, the good tired feeling exhausted from a long day but knowing he accomplished something, and the bad tired when he feels like he has been banging his head against the wall during each class because he is not getting through to students for some reason.
“There a couple of things I love about teaching that make it the ideal profession for me. It’s a professions that still allows me to use my creativity in the classroom, even in a very general way like creating assignments for students that fills me up when I’m not feeling very full creatively,” he said.
Brantingham said his colleague is very dedicated.
“What I admire most about Lloyd is probably his endless dedication to his students. He is always willing to work with them and for them,” Brantingham said.
Aquino said that he is finding himself in teaching.
“I love to help students find themselves and who they want to be, and it interests me because I’m in that process myself.”
- Cynthia Perez
College Life Editor
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