I wasn’t sure how I’d feel when I finally took my first flight. Despite delays in taking off, the security theater of the TSA, and the trial of sitting in front of loud children, I absolutely loved the experience.

I starred out the window admiring the sky for about an hour before I felt the need to even think about doing anything else. During that hour, I would not stop smiling and laughing. After years of relegating myself to the Northeast, I finally gave myself permission to go on a vacation, and it started with an experience I couldn’t have imagined.

My description may sound ridiculous to veteran fliers. One day, I may take the rush of a takeoff, the subsequent arial sightseeing, and the warmth of the sun on my face for granted. That day isn’t today, and while I’m still excited about it, I’m capturing that joy. Perhaps years from now, this post will help me remember the novelty of what then seems mundane.

As I work hard to become skilled and savvy enough to permanently break out of the Northeast, I’m going to be able to do all sorts of things I wasn’t able to do as a child. This summer, I’m proud to say I’ll be interning at Apple in Cupertino, California — a longtime dream of mine. In conjunction with the daily excitement of running a successful business, I’m never bored and always reaching new heights.

Recently, in describing these circumstances to a friend I hadn’t seen in years, I got excited and let this slip:

Honestly, I couldn’t be any happier.

In the week and a half since I said that, I’ve been desperately searching for grounds to retract that statement. If I’m going to drop words like those, I really have to mean them.

Despite my best efforts, my search turned up empty. I’m in a great place right now, and I’d like to thank you for your help getting here.

Fishy Business

I don’t have any idea what it means, either.

I had an intense experience this morning, and I’ll never forget it. At Dover Middle/High School, HS Student Council members have to say the pledge and read the morning’s announcements each day. This month is my assigned month (and some other people’s), and I had an additional duty this morning. Directly after saying the pledge, I was to instruct the student body to remain standing for a moment of silence to remember everyone impacted or stolen from us six years ago.

While reciting the pledge and this unique announcement, I became very emotional. I was certain that I would be fine before doing it, but upon saying, “I pledge,” I felt immensely sad. Completing sentences was painful, and I’m amazed that I was able to finish the task without stopping completely.

It was obvious that I was troubled by the task, but people were kind enough not to say anything to me about it. I wish I didn’t have to do that this morning. To a much greater extent, I wish no one had to.

That morning was one of the most profound experiences in my life. I remember it, second by second, in its entirety. One year later, the memories of seven years ago elicit the same emotional response from me. My most sincere condolences to those affected by that day.

By mid-day, the student was punished. As I type this post, he’s sitting in a three-hour detention session. More importantly, his privilege of using the school weight room in the evening has been “suspended until further notice”. Also, word has gotten around about the incident to people who matter – his coaches and teachers.

Although all of this brings me no joy, I hope he’s learned a lesson.

I seriously doubt it, though.

…

I’d also like to thank everyone for their concern and kind words. No, really, thank you. You all comforted me during a very difficult time in my life. For that, I’m grateful. Another set of thanks to my High School’s administration and people who care about setting things right.

By the way, in the alternate reality where I didn’t restrain myself, I would have been suspended for at least one day. That would have went on my record, which would have been passed on to whatever college I attend. In the end, I played my cards right, despite my lackluster hand.

Fast forward to this afternoon. My Dad wanted to take his motorcycle to a repair shop. He was going to make a drop off, and I was going to pick him up to bring him home. Unfortunately, there was some miscommunication, and I drove to the wrong shop. That mistake cost both of us an hour and a fair amount of gasoline.

Forget it. Not a big deal.

Immediately afterward, I had to run some food up to the school for my sister, who was at drama rehearsal. Because my day was going so poorly, I was glad to do this favor; it would make me feel like a good brother and a little better. After all, I love my sister.

After dropping the food off, I was still agitated from my subpar day. I walked outside the school and saw a bench. It was warm outside and there was a slight breeze; it was perfect. I decided that to calm down and just feel better, I would lay down on this bench, close my eyes, and daydream. It’s something I’ve done often over the last six years here at Dover Middle/High School. I thought Dover was the kind of place where you can do something like that and feel safe. I was infinitely comfortable, safe, and secure.

…

Water. Someone was pouring water onto my head. A middle school boy who I’ve never met was pouring water, from a bottle he was drinking out of, onto my head. Water. I just went for invasive ear surgery. If I got my ear wet, I’d be very sick and in excruciating pain for at least a week. More drastically, it could ruin my surgery. For no reason, this boy was pouring water onto my head.

I jumped up, appalled. I’m not going to lie to you, I lost it. In front of one witness, a school substitute teacher, I verbally let loose on this kid. Out of all of the instances in my life where violence was seemingly appropriate, this was number one.

But – I restrained myself. I don’t believe that violence solves problems, and I’m proud I stuck with my values.

I’m just having a hard time believing that a young man can just walk up to another man, an older man taking a nap, and randomly inflict harm upon him. Forget my healing ear – the water was ice cold. I could have jerked my head and slammed it down on the bench.

As I yelled at this boy, a 7th grader, he laughed at me. I questioned what values he had. I questioned if his parents taught him anything about respect. He kept laughing, I kept yelling. He walked away.

…

I approached the only credible witness, the substitute teacher who was with her young son. I apologized to her for anything inappropriate I said in front of her boy, and she told me I handled myself well. I asked her if she knew the boy. She did, and I took down his name and hers. Needless to say, the Middle School Principal will be paid a visit from one Mr. Richard Mondello tomorrow morning.

It’s not a vengeance thing – I don’t believe in revenge, either. This young man needs to understand that you don’t do something like that to anybody. It doesn’t matter that he could have ruined a very painful and expensive surgery and ruined my chances to hear ever again out of that ear. What if I had been laying on my side, with my healing ear facing up? It would have been toast.

The inside of my good ear was drenched. My hair was drenched. Luckily, the cotton ball I wore in my healing ear protected it.

This could have easily been the worst day of my life.

The main reason I made my way over to the lovely Vassar today was to see a panel by Jeph Jacques, writer and illustrator of my favorite webcomic, Questionable Content. His panel was a simple and hilarious question and answer session. Jeph and Cristi are just like I’d imagine them to be, funny and friendly. No, really, they were really nice.

I love them as much as you can love people you’re acquainted with via the Internet, and hope they keep doing what they do for a long time. If you don’t read Questionable Content, I recommend you clear out a few hours of your life and start from the beginning.

lol i cant believe these pics got posted….its going to be BADDDD when her boyfriend sees these- http://absenturlforyourprotection/

The person who allegedly wrote it was only an acquaintance. The real url went to something like “facebook.com.blah.blah.cn”. An obvious phishing attempt. The post I left on the person’s wall tells the story:

I barely know you, but there’s something you must know.

In the last 24 hours you posted this on my wall:
“lol i cant believe these pics got posted….its going to be BADDDD when her boyfriend sees these- http://absenturlforyourprotection/”

When I clicked the link (which I was suspicious of), I was asked for my name and password. “.cn” is China’s domain extension if you were unaware. I submitted the email address “bob@aol.com” and the password “asdf”. The login was successful and I was redirected to “facebook.com”.

This means that your facebook account has been compromised and you’re spamming ALL of your friends with this garbage. I don’t know whether a spammer has compromised your account, or it is one of the dozens of crappy third-party applications you’ve apparently randomly added. Either way, most people don’t take kindly to spammers, and it’s unfortunate your account was compromised. You should probably fix the problem and apologize to your friends.

I don’t take kindly to people who (seemingly) cannot take care of their web accounts. Unfriended. I’m don’t think I’m bitter or heartless – I believe I’m pragmatic. Although I understand that the person whose account was used to spam dozens of walls is also a victim of the spamming, I doubt facebook itself is to blame for the access. At this point, the person’s burden overtook their usefulness as an acquaintance.

Write a note to yourself,
you’ll be glad that you did.
It’s a reminder of the past,
a piece of your thoughts frozen in time,
unaltered by fickle emotions.

It can be a diary, journal, or post-it.
Not a blog, never a blog,
for the public eye foils honesty.
Write one from yourself, to yourself, by yourself.
Stash it away, and be sure to read it later.

I wrote that poem, A Note to Yourself, for a school literary magazine earlier this year. I rarely write poetry, but I felt (and feel) passionate about this topic.

I usually post important details about my life here on Exposay. The crux of this post, however, happened before Exposay even existed. Last year, starting January 1, along with my new year’s resolutions, I instituted a secret policy. I started keeping something resembling a journal. Using the application MacJournal, I wrote myself a note every day for the last 365 days. In a journal, analogous to a file folder, I created twelve journals corresponding to the twelve months of the year. In each of those journals, I wrote between 28 to 31 entries, corresponding to the days of the month.

I use Christmas Break as a reflection period of the previous year. Keeping with that theme, and listening to the advice in my poem, I read my entries for the last year. My first entry was simple enough…

So, this is the new year. I’ll chronicle it, methinks. I resolve to have a record of the entire year.

Continuing on, I wrote about anything that I felt that the future me would enjoy reading. In other words, all of the work writing my thoughts down was for this moment, the reflection period. A few trends:

• Mock Trial was hard, very hard. In fact, my junior year of high school could be defined by Mock Trial, seeing as though I wrote so much about it. Re-reading how worried I was about certain trials, I felt nervous for myself, even though I know the outcome.
• I was really stressed out during my junior year. I mean, really stressed. It’s a tough year.
• Relationships fell apart and built themselves back up again as time went by. Time really does heal all.
• Going back to the places of my childhood was one of the best things I’ve ever done.
• Writing a Constitution (in committee) was difficult.
• Wisdom tooth pain is bad. I still have to get those taken care of.
• I started writing college essays earlier than I thought.

Some days I wrote empty comments like, “nothing happened”, and others I wrote several paragraphs of deep intellectual thought on philosophy or analysis of my life. It’s those longer posts that I really enjoy, but the smaller ones at least give me a sequence with which to relive the year.

I’m going to continue to write my daily logs. Only, this year, I plan on writing more. I urge you to give it a try. The perspective it gives you in the future is invaluable.

You can spend hours generating theories about why someone did something, or you can just ask. When someone lashes or does something unexpected, save time by seeking clarification.

This notion struck a cord with me. Occasionally, I hear someone make some comment to me that I believe was hurtful. I’ll wonder why he or she made such a remark, and let it drive me crazy. Why not simply ask him or her to quality the statement? Genius.

When I was a mere freshman, I was approached by a technical worker whom I was friends with at my high school, and was asked if I had any ideas to get some sort of television-driven announcement distribution system established throughout the school. I had plenty of free time back then, and by the next day I had a decent prototype created. Technically, it was unimpressive – a web page with three frames. The top frame had a clock that updated itself and slowly moved left and right. The middle frame’s loaded a .txt file and scrolled messages up the screen. The bottom frame was a CNN-esque ticker, which also loaded from a .txt file. My idea was that one could remotely access a computer attached to the video feed and launch the web page full screen. Then, he or she would update the .txt files to update the announcements. The master web page would force-refresh itself every 10 minutes to display updates. The system was simple, but elegant. It got the job done, and cost taxpayers nothing.

For a long time, that’s what we used. ‘We’ reefers to the committee set up, consisting of me, a member of administration, the technology department, and a few other teachers. I was the sole student. That didn’t stop me from taking charge, though. I called the shots and named the project “DNN: The Dover News Network”. I photoshopped a logo together, and was excited to keep coding new features into the project. Excuse the shoddy photoshop work and the tribute to CNN. It’s ironic that I now detest CNN and the other American news networks.

In the project, I had my first experience with working in committee with someone intolerable. This person was a teacher who I never had, who was responsible for the cable system. He wanted video, rather than simply text and images. With my implementation in HTML, CSS, and Javascript, that was impossible. I thought, and still think, that the addition of video was an awful idea.

I had a different take. The direction the project was going required the purchasing of dozens of televisions for the school classrooms. Meanwhile, the project was essentially a web page that could be loaded on any computer. At that time in Dover High School, there was at least one computer in almost every classroom, but far fewer televisions. Additionally, a computer screen has higher resolution and quality than a television, and users would have far more control of DNN via a web browser than via immutable television screen. Purchasing backward technology was an unwise investment, and adding video to the mix made no sense. There was no content to be served. The school didn’t own a single video camera, nor a computer capable of editing video. Finally, who would edit the video?

Eventually, my worst nightmare occurred: I lost control of the project. The other members of the committee, ‘adults’, decided that an expensive proprietary software package was necessary to save the day. They were overhauling my system without considering my concerns. I was told that putting a link to the web page that ran the full-screen system on the computer desktops was “impossible” and a “security hazard”.

They had taken my baby from me. I had spent clearly over 100 hours of my time creating, maintaining, and adding features to DNN, for no compensation whatsoever. Meetings happened more infrequently, and eventually no one updated the system with its new software. Ironically, the expensive software did a horrible job at handling the simple tasks my web page did for months. It would lag, crash, or freeze daily.

Frustrated, I sent out a memo calling for a meeting with the others involved in the project. We sat down, and they again began talking about lofty goals they did not understand how to implement. I interrupted them, and laid an ultimatum. I reminded them that I’d spent an excess of one hundred hours of my time on a project that was replaced with the blink of an eye, and asked if I could be given community service hours in exchange for my work, retroactively. In Dover, all students are required to acquire ninety hours of community service before graduating. I had actually already gotten mine through fulfilling volunteer work at an elementary school, but wanted to be compensated somehow.

I was the driving force, but was in the back seat. One can’t put hours of valuable time into something he or she doesn’t believe in. I knew that after leaving that meeting that I would never work on the project again, and it would never move forward.

I was absolutely correct. As of this year, the system is inactive.

Today, two years later, I’m not bitter. I was at the time, but have since moved on to bigger and better things in my high school career. On top of that, I learned plenty from the experience. The technical knowledge is absolute rubbish today, but I experienced the shortcomings of bureaucracy, and encountered what happens when ignorance and personal agendas are allowed to govern committee. I was guilty of the latter portion, but most certainly not the former.

I’ve decided to make the experience a mere bullet point on my résumé of my high school accomplishments. My rationale is that harping on that experience in an essay would be an essay of half-truths – out of the question. Alas, I can’t bring myself to remove it from my résumé completely; I was proud of it. It was mine.