Bonfires on Franklin Street
…circa February 2001 (pre-Justinsomnia), after UNC beat Duke. Sadly Duke won the NCAA championship that year, but UNC came back in 2005. I was inspired to post these shots from the ground after seeing this time-lapse video from above: Franklin Street after the victory.
You know the one thing that strikes me looking at these shots 8 years later (other than the fact that I can’t believe it has been 8 years)? Is how few people had cameras. Like almost nobody had a camera. Come to think of it, at the time my digital camera was only two months old. In the pictures I took, I think I saw maybe one throwaway film cam and few pro rigs from the Daily Tar Heel. Everyone else was just in the moment.
Reunion
Well there’s nothing quite like a ten year high school reunion to trigger some reflection.
Most of my conversations on Saturday night would start with where I live, San Francisco, how long I’ve been there, three years, and what I’m doing now, web development at a startup. Living outside of Texas I felt was an accomplishment in and of itself, as the majority of my former classmates (hallmates really, in a graduating class of 500 I was only ever in class with a fraction of them) still reside in and around Austin. Of that I’m told roughly 160 had RSVPed. Several people had made it out of Texas but eventually came back. A few were living in a few major cities around the country (NY, LA, SF), though I’m sure that number was under-represented, as that’s precisely the subgroup least likely to return. Naturally I was there to buck that trend.
What has led me to where I am now, over the last ten years?
I keep thinking about this question. It’s the essential part of knowing someone that was obviously missing from all of the conversations I had that night.
Over the last ten years, I’ve had zero contact with any of the people that were there (other than Casey). The amazing thing about the human brain is that I recognized at least 90% of people. Afterwards it kind of made me nauseous to think about, as if I were living through a strange psychology experiment, having severed all ties with everyone I knew at age 18, only to meet up with all of them in a bar ten years later. And then walking out of that bar at midnight, knowing full well that I’ll probably never see any of those people again.
When I graduated from high school in 1998, no one had cellphones, and very few of my classmates had email addresses or knew about the web. I had an AOL account, which I quickly abandoned when I received my college email address (along with every other entering freshman). So none of the primary means one now has to stay in loose contact existed then.
When I left for college, not only did I go far away and by myself, I went completely. I never left Chapel Hill during the summer, so I never bumped into old friends doing the same. In college, I didn’t really find my groove until senior year, so I ended up tacking on two more years of grad school (which felt more like an extended undergrad). Then I stayed another year as a full time employee working at the same the job I’d had since the summer after my sophomore year.
That’s one of my internal paradoxes. I feel like I’ve really only been independent, out of school, and out on my own for the last three years (when I moved to California). But on the other hand, I’ve been working continuously for the last nine.
Social networking got really big in 2002 (some time between undergrad and grad school) but I thought it was limited (and annoying) compared to the blog I’d started around the same time, so I never joined up. And that decision alone probably shielded (or spared?) me from wave after wave of mini-reunions as old friends from high school started looking each other up, first on Friendster, and later MySpace and Facebook.
In the last few years, I’ve met back up with two people from high school, but neither of them came last weekend. I’m not sure why. I haven’t looked over my yearbook, but I can think of at least one or two other people I was really curious to see again, but they didn’t show up either. Maybe I should have made more of an effort to track them down? I probably spent most of my time that night talking to five or so people. There was at least one person I was genuinely happy to see again—it felt like no time had passed at all.
Several of the people who were couples in high school are now married. At the time they had been the model couples, the perfect couples, the supercouples. Seeing them still together really surprised me. At first glance it seemed totally natural, but at the same time it was kind of eerie. Like nothing had changed at all.
I will say this: everyone looked really good. Maybe the reunion-attending audience self-selects for people who clean up well, but you never know. The people who came could have been the ones who had hung around Pflugerville, gotten fat, gotten trashy, and aged beyond their years. But I saw none of that. Most everyone still looked youthful—just more polished, happy, and more or less comfortable. It was a reunion after all. In June. In Texas.
The Age of Reunions
One of my good friends, who I happened to meet in high school, reminded me that there’d be some sort of reunion this year, and I thought to myself, “Whoa, has it already been five years?” (thinking that the default span between reunions) and then realized “Zomg! It’s been ten years since I graduated from high school.” Ten years never felt more minuscule than just now.
For most people that equates to four years of college and six years of life, and probably a good start on marriage, mortgage, and babies. I, on the other hand, extended my time at school by an additional three years, two in grad school, and one in what I refer to as “post-grad school” practically everything was the same (apartment, job, friends)—I just wasn’t going to classes. I’ve only recently felt on my own—after almost three years in California.
My feelings about high school are decidedly mixed (to put it mildly), but I wouldn’t want to be left out of the awkwardnessfest that is trying to remember the names of people I haven’t laid eyes on in ten years! And as Stephanie added, “Maybe we could parlay this into a trip down to Schlitterbahn.” I’m sure my parents would love to see me. I hope it’s not while we’re in France.
Update: I went.
UNC, lookin’ good
Common knowledge to those of you in Chapel Hill, but for everyone else, here are three glimpses of Carolina. On Saturday Stephanie and I walked through campus after lunch with Christy and Patrick. We started at the post office and headed towards Old West. Got drinks from the Old Well and then walked around South Building for the expansive view of Polk Place.
From there we walked through the quad past Manning Hall, where I spent 2+ years at SILS.
We walked past the Undergraduate Library, through the Pit, and into a very swankily redesigned Student Stores. Detail I loved the most: the new escalators (remember that old giant staircase?) have carolina blue rubber hand-holds.
We walked past Davis Library towards my first undergraduate dorm, Grimes, then through Coker Arboretum.
From there we walked past Spencer, where I lived for the last three years of undergrad, and finally to the Morehead Planetarium’s sundial before returning to our car.
Musing on my older, sculptor self
On the way home from the grocery store, picking up some fruit for the week, I had a thought that was half a wish and half a wonder.
Why hadn’t I delayed college to continue taking sculpture classes at the Elizabet Ney Art Museum? Just to see how much farther I could have gone. Several things precluded this from happening, most prominently the desire in me to strike out on my own. But then I wonder if the opportunity had offered itself, would that have altered the landscape? I know it was never really a tangible option, those classes were just a fun diversion, they made sense in the context of my focus on art in high school. And now, (though I realize it would have been highly improbable), given the chance to take a road less traveled, to focus on art and my eye and my technical skill in the absense of so many other distractions, I might have advised my younger self differently.
I don’t remember if my last class was that spring or the summer before I left for Chapel Hill, but I do remember that it was that summer I decided I would major in art because no other “lifestyle” would be more challenging. I also remember there was a moment when I realized my school schedule ruled out taking any classes at the Ney in the foreseeable future. I felt a kind of loss. I think my dad may have recommended bringing some wax to sculpt at school that I could cast during the summers. But I never came home during the summers. I took a few art classes, but I didn’t major in art. And I haven’t done any sculpting since.
watching unc beat duke
while six of our crew experienced the unc-duke game at the dean dome (tim wearing a tarheel-styled mexican wrestler mask), abe, jane, erik, and i watched the nailbiter at carlie and todd’s house, replete with chips, dips, carrots, and trail mix.
i was on my toes for the last several minutes. and it all came down to a second unc free throw that bounced off the rim, was recovered by unc, and followed up by a 2-point shot that brought us into the lead by 1 point with only seconds left in the game. duke fouled unc on the shot, we brought the lead to 75-73, and duke was unable to respond.
this graph of the score over the course of the game (courtesy of espn) pretty accurately conveys how close and hard fought it was, how unc dominated in the beginning of the second half, lost their lead, and then totally came from behind to win the game. it’s a beautiful information visualization.
after the game, we got ourselves together, made it to franklin street to watch some nascent bonfires, and then spent the majority of the night at linda’s, drinking and eating and talking about what happened.
70-71
oh man, i watched unc lose to duke at off franklin tonight. that sucks. no riots for chapel hill. we had the ball with 18 seconds left and somehow we didn’t even try to make a shot. just tossed the ball away.
i gotta say it was like that all night, it seemed more like football on the basketball court than anything else. much better than the super bowl though. it seemed that whole minutes would go by without either side scoring. i was expecting brilliance hearing paul talk up bojangles so much, but unc’s offense was really crap tonight. oh well.
go heels!
on choosing a major
My brothers didn’t have trouble in finding their direction and I am lost beyond belief.
oh katie. i understand how hopeless things feel. but the truth is i had just as hard a time as you are. surely mom and dad have told you that they worried that i was going to drop out during my second year. they must have because they still remind me about it. basically i was hating that the subjects i loved (or had loved) like art and english were not as enjoyable when i took art and english classes.
i stumbled upon linguistics because i happened to take an intro to linguistics class which i enjoyed and because a professor was very persuasive about recruiting me into the program. i was never entirely sure of my decision, it just seemed like the most interesting option of several less desirable options. even after i formally decided on linguistics as my major (after cycling through art and english) i only really enjoyed a few of the classes. probably because i just don’t like taking classes.
and c’mon, linguistics is useless! but so is every other liberal arts major. they don’t teach you enough to be an expert in any field, but they do try to expose you to broad subject matter and force you to think critically about it. all the other useful skills you’ll pick up during your first job and every job and experience you have thereafter, over the course of your life. it’s unfortunate that undergraduate programs seem to overemphasize the importance of figuring out exactly what career you want before you’ve experienced doing any work in that career.
and not to speak for matthew, but he’s been struggling with the same exact thing for three years! he only now started a major in history, something he’s really interested in learning more about, but it’s not like that move provides him with a sure path to a career after he graduates. remember that mom and dad and so many people their age would say that they’re still trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives. one of the hardest things to learn is how to live with uncertainty.
in all honesty, the major you choose doesn’t really matter. it certainly won’t force you down a road you don’t want to go, and it probably won’t limit your future opportunities in any significant way. just think of it like a concentration. it’s something you’re interested in now that you happened to be taking a bunch of classes in. by the time you graduate, you could be interested in doing completely different things. and you’ll have no problem doing them no matter what your major is. all that future employers may want to see is that you’ve had a well-rounded education with an array of interesting or relevant experiences.
love, justin
