one|chapter 4:
quick bio
Let's say I'm the most arrogant person you know. Well, how arrogant could I be without a quick and dirty mini biography of my life on my website? So here goes:
The Early Years
To begin with, I was born in Norfolk, Virginia. I don't remember much of my house in Norfolk, although growing up there made me a lifelong fan of living near the ocean. Even today, whenever I drive south and start to see the tall long-needle pine trees, the sandy dirt or the smell of salt in the air, I appreciate the fact that I got to spend my early years in Norfolk. My dad did his residency in Norfolk, which was the whole reason that my family was there. Eventually though, he finished that and we moved to what would be my home through elementary, middle and high school: Winchester, Virginia.
Winchester is an interesting town. It's very wholesome, somewhat homogeneous and socially conservative.
The College Years
Williams College. Home to generations of happy ephs, toiling in the purple valley, or bubble, or what-have-you. I arrived in the fall of 1996, a fresh-faced, wide-eyed freshman at the finest liberal arts school in the world. I didn't have any idea what college would be like, but I naively assumed it would be both easy and fun. Later, my naivete would prove prophetic, but at the time I didn't know why I was so optimistic.
I'm sure I'll mention this other times, but let me reiterate again: the small and seemingly meaningless decisions I made at every turn ended up putting me in the current position I'm at. Given my charmed life, one could think that I was blessed with good decision-making abilities. That's incorrect. I'm just damn lucky to be where I am. Sometimes, slight changes seem to have prevented me from even greater heights, but as for my idiotic tendency to see myself as star-crossed, it is only because I have the arrogance to assume that everything will come easier to me than to everyone else. Now back to the story...
When I first started filling out the forms relating to my early days at Williams, I had no idea what import they possessed. I received the opportunity to apply for a "First-year Residential Seminar" (the first of many ideas to incorrectly appropriate UVA's ancient "first-year" tradition...supposedly Thomas Jefferson told students at UVA they were only in their "first year" of leaning, and that even when they graduated they would continue to be in their "18th year", etc...since Williams has no connection to TJ, there was never any explanation for why the admissions office insisted freshman were "first-years". Even more oddly, after your second year you became a "sophomore" which meant there was no reason for the original designation in the first place!) which involved a group of students living in the same dorm taking the same class. Both John and I applied to this "FRS" program. We also both attempted to sign up for the Williams Outdoor Club's "WOOLF" camping trip which took place right before school began. I remember signing up for a canoing trip as my first choice (being an avid canoe person) and then the toughest trip (5-day) followed by a (3-day). Little did I know how things would shake out.
I was accepted into the FRS program, but John was not. As I found out in the first couple of days at Williams, there were tons of people who had applied and not been accepted, which caused the college in later years to start creating multiple FRS entries. For the class of 2000, however, there was only one, and they all lived in the Williams dorm (yeah, the Williams Dorm at Williams College in Williamstown...) in the "E" entry. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
John and I actually were placed into the same WOOLF trip, despite not requesting this to be the case. As it turned out, we were both tardy in our form replying, which resulted in both of being placed in a wussy 3-day program along with some people who had never been camping before. Despite being disappointed, I resolved to make a good first impression. Complete with some new hiking boots and a great back back, I felt ready to take on the world, let alone Williams College.
The trip turned out to be a cakewalk. The first "day" was spent getting our gear together and camping out on the football field. Again, I felt like I had gotten the shaft through no fault of my own. It was a pleasant evening, despite the non-toughness of it, and the next day we were bussed out to a state park.
Which had running water.
Yeah, it was hardly "roughing it" in any sense of the word. Oh, well. My fellow woolfies were all cool, and though I didn't hang out with tons of them over the next four years, I did manage to remain friends, which was nice. Our second day we hiked up to a lake, ran into another WOOLF group, abandoned our leaders intentions, and simply hung out by the lake the entire day, returning only at dusk. When we arrived back at the college the next day, I didn't feel any more prepared than I had been when I left. Only now I got to meet my entrymates. Heh.
Williams E was an unusual entry, as I'd soon discover.
To begin with, the people in FRS were artificially more diverse than the campus body as a whole. On most large university campuses, this probably wouldn't make much of a difference. But at Williams, there was really only one common thread most of the students shared, namely, athletics. Your average eph competes in two sports, plays IM soccer and/or broomball when not in season, and hits the gym a great deal. Several of my friends were three-sport athletes. Even those who didn't compete in a varsity or club sport tended to at least go hiking regularly or enjoy long runs on the numerous trails and paths around Williamstown. Unfortunately for FRS, because the average entry possessed so many athletes, weighting the diversity of the entry ended up creating a place with far less athletes than your regular entry. This, combined with the exclusivity of the FRS application process, didn't leave the name "FRS" with anything but annoyance from most of the student body.
As I got to know my fellow housemates, the entry rapidly broke down into a series of groups.
The Washington, D.C. Years
Coming to the District of Columbia was a good move. I had barely graduated from college when my parents began to rumble about kicking me out of the house.