ABOUT
ME
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Well, if you had the attention span to make it through some of the other aspects of this Web site, maybe you'll have a little more to learn some about me. I was born in Brooklyn, New York on May 16, 1983. I spent the first nine years of my life in Brooklyn in a dandy little section of the borough called Park Slope. I lived on 3rd St. which might as well be a rite of passage for anyone from the Slope -- anybody who's anybody lived on that street for at least a few days. Brooklyn is still the home of my two best friends, Josh and Sam, who I have known for 20 and 15 years respectively. Brooklyn was great -- good friends, a good little league baseball team, good pizza and Chinese, all of which delivered -- but then it was all taken away from me. |
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After third grade we up and moved to a quaint little oasis of superficiality, Millburn, New Jersey. Things got off to a poor start. My first teacher, easily one of the worst teachers I've ever had, was Mrs. Blank. That's just too much to handle as a fourth-grader. What comeback is there for, "Mrs. Blank is your mom"? That's right, there is none. Things only got worse after that, though. Around seventh grade, people started discovering Abercrombie, and if you didn't wear Abercrombie, you weren't nothing. So I was nothing. It wasn't until about 10th grade that I realized all those people were superficial um...superficial (we'll leave it at that, this is a school project after all) and didn't let that whole "scene" bother me. In January 2003, I got accepted to UNC and went off to Chapel Hill without any other Millburn High School folks. |
I arrived in Chapel Hill in August 2001 and immediately fell in love. Everything went great freshman year, all except for my roommate, Crazy-ass Joe. At least there's some great stories from that guy, so it wasn't a total loss. In my time here, I've learned that there are people out there whose life doesn't revolve around the mall, that iced tea is not sweet tea and the virtues of the word "y'all". I also can't talk much about my days at Carolina without mentiong The Daily Tar Heel. I joined the paper my first semester and have been on staff ever since. While at the DTH I have learned a very valuable lesson: I will never get anything I apply for, instead I should just announce that I'm taking the position. Assistant sports editor for Spring '03? Shot down. Sports editor for Fall '04? Shot down. Yet didn't apply for assistant-ship either of the last two semesters, and guess who's been an assistant? It's a crazy life I lead.
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Life truly got crazy, good crazy, in Fall '03. For the five greatest months of my life I was an honorary Australian, living it up in Coogee, a beach suburb of Sydney. I was there for "study" abroad, but the study part was applied very loosely. A decent amount of blame goes to having a window that overlooked the ocean. An even larger amount of the blame goes to the 32 fine people I was living with at the Coogee Residence, or the Rez as it was more affectionately called. Those fine folks, led by the amazing Rachel Harris, the Vandy boys Luke and Andy, Dookies James and Steve, Australian Daniel and his "a hole is a hole" buddy Tom, Big Baze, Business in the Front, Party in the Back Will Baker, The Rock, Wyoming Brian, "my Brian," Mary and Kathleen, Klepto Kim, my extremely-talented beer pong partner Virginia, and of course my good friends V.B. and Toohey's New helped make those five months completely stress-free and helped bring so much irreparable damage to my liver that it probably would have gone in to open rebellion of my body if any of it still existed. All that plus Rugby World Cup, LEI, Spring Break:Thailand, New Zealand and so much more made for one absolutely amazing experience. Unfortunately, I am now back in the real world. |
The real world has hit back pretty hard. I've found my niche at the paper and being away helped me discover who my true friends are. But there's that whole class thing that's been messing up my mojo. There's also the whole my-roommate-is-a-*$##@%$ thing, but at least our time together is almost finished. After three straight Brian roommates, some better than others, I'm boycotting that name, at least when it comes to living arrangements. Although this semester has been the equivalent of GPA suicide, I've been trying to still enjoy myself, which is probably part of the problem. But that's what I realized in Australia -- why suffer for good grades if you're not going to have some wild memories in the process? Isn't the story of the night my friend dressed as a blind man for Halloween and got kicked out of the same bar on three separate occasions a whole lot better than the Saturday night I stayed in my room designing a Web site? I also realized there's a big, fun world outside of the U.S. and I should explore it as much as possible. Fortunately, the journalism school made the brilliant mistake of giving me a $2,000 check to spend as I please in Europe this summer. If nothing else, it beats folding shirts in New Jersey. |
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This site was last updated on April 13.