Manhattan Cruisin’ and Juilliard Blues

You can find Dr. Horenstein on the seventh floor either teaching about blood splatters or the biology of cells. At first glance, you would think that Dr. Horenstein’s first and only passion is science. At least, you definitely wouldn’t have thought that a forensics and biology teacher was also a secret actor! However, learning more, you’ll be surprised to find out that not only did Dr. Horenstein love acting, but also writing, and even worked as a waiter!

What were you like as a child?

I was very motivated to do well in school. I was always really studious and physically active as a child. I had a lot of energy, and I was out of my house as much as possible. I was always at my friends’ houses. I was always at sleepovers. I spent as little time in my home as I possibly could.

What did you want to be when you were a child?

I had no idea what I wanted to be. The two things, or actually the three things, I was most excited about were tennis; I played a lot of tennis. I was also a competitive swimmer. I also did a lot of creative writing (mainly poetry). I don’t think I did fiction, just mostly poetry. Then, when I was like 11 or 12, out of nowhere, I remember saying to my father that I wanted to take an acting class. Then I started doing acting on stage like in theater plays. All of that, except writing, continued through high school.

What inspired you to go to Juilliard for college?

I wanted to study acting. In the late ‘70s, Juilliard had three components, so you could go for music, dance, or theater. Now, they have more, but when I went, it was just for acting.

Did you stay at Juilliard for four years and then graduate with an acting degree?

No, I left. I dropped out my first year; I was very unhappy there. I should’ve seen it coming, because when I was deciding where to go to school, my high school acting teacher told me not to go to Juilliard. He told me that Juilliard was a place for polishing your techniques, not learning techniques. In terms of the work of an actor, he said it wasn’t going to help me. The problem was that Juilliard was hard to turn down. Juilliard was a very famous school; it was like getting into Harvard for me. Now that I think of it, I would’ve been much happier going to a different school. One of my other problems was that the school was so small. There were only 30 kids in my school and less than 100 kids in the acting departments, and there was no housing, not even a cafeteria. There were no extracurricular activities, no outside life. As an 18-year-old, I wasn’t ready for that. I needed more of a support system than the one I got there, and that was hard for me.

Do you think your acting career would’ve gone further if you went to a different school?

I think that’s possible; it’s definitely not inconceivable. If I went to a different school that I enjoyed more, I might’ve also enjoyed acting more. I didn’t have someone who took my hand and helped me grow as an actor. At Sarah Lawrence [where he went after], professors were really interested and mentored you and supported you, whereas at Juilliard, it was very much sink-or-swim.

I was unhappy at Juilliard for the reasons I mentioned, but I need to say that many of my fellow students were very happy there. For the right person who is 100% sure that they want to pursue a career in acting, the school can be a terrific place. For one thing, it can open up doors for you in the profession. For example, the upperclassmen put on an amazing production the year I attended that was so well received, the entire show, including all the student actors, was transplanted to the Public Theater for a run the following summer. Pretty awesome. Yet, that’s why I told my students early on that it’s not good to choose schools based on reputation. You have to find a school that’s the best fit for you; I might’ve been happier at NYU than I was at Juilliard.

Are you still acting in any way?

Actually, I stopped for a while after dropping out of Juilliard, but then about 4 years ago, for some reason someone actually suggested, “Hey, have you ever thought of taking an acting class?” and it just clicked for me. Then, I started taking acting classes again, on and off for four years now, mostly during the summer, and I really enjoy it. It’s sad to me that I let it go for as long as I did.

What happened after Juilliard?

So I left Juilliard and transferred to Sarah Lawrence but not the year after. I took a gap year and worked as a waiter and lived the city life. I found an apartment in Manhattan, which was really cool, because at this time, a waiter could live in Manhattan on their salary. I was living on Carmine Street, which is in the heart of the village. I was sharing an apartment with two others, an NYU law student and a guy who was struggling to be an actor, and I didn’t know what I wanted to be. I was also taking dance classes, because I had an amazing movement teacher. I loved it so much that when I left Juilliard, I took ballet and modern dance classes while working as a waiter. Then, I went to Sarah Lawrence, and my focus was still the arts and humanities, not science. Sarah Lawrence has an amazing creative writing program, so the first class I took was a fiction writing class taught by a very young writer at the time, and this was his first gig, and he was amazing.

What did you like about Sarah Lawrence?

I liked Sarah Lawrence because it had a lot of support, and I liked the students a lot. They were very quirky, interesting, and very much their own people. When I went to high school, everyone was trying to conform, but at Sarah Lawrence, it was like a bunch of misfits. It was people that didn’t fit anywhere else but fit in at Sarah Lawrence. They were just really smart, interesting people. The class size was also really small. You would sit around in a table, and every class would be a seminar class. You’d be sitting around at your table drinking coffee talking to your teacher. The other cool thing about Sarah Lawrence was that everything is divided into two components. One component is the classwork, and the other component is working intensely on your individual projects. Every week you meet for a half hour with the teacher, and you work on your individual project, so professors and students get a lot of facetime, which was really great for me.

When did you become interested in biology?

At Sarah Lawrence, I had a really amazing biology teacher. After I graduated, I was like, “What am I going to do with myself?” Then, out of the blue I was like, “I want to be a biochemist.” When I graduated, I went back to being a waiter, and I was living in the Hell’s Kitchen area. I went to take classes at Hunter and took all the classes I never took like genetics and biochemistry, and this is where I got all my undergrad science credits. I took what was needed to get into a PhD program in biology. I was really enjoying it, and I thought maybe medical school, but that didn’t really interest me, so I thought the PhD program sounded like fun. I still wanted to stay in the city, so I ended up going to Columbia.

How long were you at Columbia?

I was at Columbia for a while, longer than I should have been. It took me 10 years to get my PhD, which was longer than it should’ve taken me. One problem was that after my second year, my thesis advisor left the school, so I had to start all over again. My next advisor―it didn’t work out―I wasn’t happy with him, and I was with him for over a year. Then, when I finally got settled into a lab I liked, it was the beginning of my fourth year. I also changed my subject from biochemistry to biophysics. I had to learn some new stuff, and all that took around 10 years.

When did you decide to go into teaching?

When I was doing my postdoctoral work, I realized I didn’t want to be a researcher. One of the reasons was because I wanted something that was more social, and I found research to be very lonely, and I wanted something more interactive. Also, the funding was so bad for grants that biology jobs were extremely hard to get, and you would have to leave New York, and I wasn’t willing to do that. So, those were the two major reasons why I didn’t stay in research. I wanted to do something social, and I liked kids, so I joined the New York City Teaching Fellows program and that’s how I ended up teaching.

Where was your first teaching job?

I really wanted to work with middle school students. I ended up at a small middle school in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn that’s no longer in existence. I realized that I wasn’t really using my biology background, so I went to one of the Urban Assembly high schools, and while I was there, there was an ad for a job here at Stuy. I applied and got the job and started working September of 2012.

What do you teach at Stuy?

I teach Advanced Topics in Biology, which is one of the freshman biology courses, and I also teach Forensics.

What do students learn in Forensics?

Forensics is the science of crime solving. It could be fingerprints, taking fingerprints, blood splattering patterns, DNA evidence, hair evidence, toxicology, autopsies, or handwriting analysis.

Any other future plans?

I’m not planning to go back to school anytime soon. I am in the Math for America program, which is a fellowship for math and science teachers to get more experience, and I go about 10 times a year. I do plan to continue taking acting classes but am definitely not planning to go back to school.

Dr. Horenstein definitely had an eventful life from waiting tables to acting to taking science classes and becoming a biology teacher here at Stuyvesant. However, one of the most important takeaways from this interview is how Dr. Horenstein chose happiness in the end by choosing a career he loves and can still learn about to this day.