I feel like I've been out of high school forever. So I just read to keep my mind going.
I know exactly what that movie's [Brokeback mountain] about. I can't define it; it doesn't tie up in a perfect bow. But it's about adolescence. It's about what it feels like - this isn't meant as a criticism, but like things I didn't relate to, which were high school movies. Where I'd watch it and I'd be like, "Well, am I like the kid that nobody likes? Or am I like the person who everybody [likes]?" I couldn't [tell]. I was like quantifying, putting me in a box. "This is my personality at that age" and "I'm this kind of person" just felt like bullshit to me.
I think there were so many times that I just felt so overwhelmed by school and by my relationships with my friends and I felt like I was going to be stuck in high school forever and I was never going to achieve my dreams.
Parents don't get that, though. They don't understand about the fragility of teen friendships. They don't understand how easy it is for things to break apart, how someone you thought would be by your side forever can just disappear, or turn on you, or decide she likes someone more than she likes you. Parents always talk about romantic relationships being so ephemeral and fleeting in high school. What they don't get is that friendships can be the same way.
I've learned that I don't want to be as open or public about relationships anymore. In my first relationship, I thought I could hold on to the normalcy of just being like "Yeah, we're dating," just like if it were high school and I was telling my friends. But in high school, there aren't articles written everywhere when you break up and you don't have everyone in the school coming up to you and asking what happened or sharing their opinion with you. It didn't feel like ours anymore, it felt like everybody else's.
I have no idea what a high school party looks like. I was just with my friend, and we were walking down Venice and there was this gathering of people playing Bongo drums, and so after dinner we sat down with them and played Bongo drums for a while. That's the closest thing I've gotten to a high school experience, meeting strangers and just hanging out with them.
I'm taking a pretty light load. I'm doing well. Gideon and Jason are both in school too, so we find time between shows to get work done, and during the day. I really like Columbia. Unlike high school, I don't feel any pressure to get straight-As. I just like learning.
Robots are important also. If I don my pure-scientist hat, I would say just send robots; I'll stay down here and get the data. But nobody's ever given a parade for a robot. Nobody's ever named a high school after a robot. So when I don my public-educator hat, I have to recognize the elements of exploration that excite people. It's not only the discoveries and the beautiful photos that come down from the heavens; it's the vicarious participation in discovery itself.
I ended up in college by accident. Everything in my life, I ended up in by accident. I was down south in this high school doing whatever. It could just not contain me. I quit school and took off and traveled around. Nobody knew where I was I just couldn't handle it anymore. It was a big scandal, I was gone. I left.
My earliest thought, long before I was in high school, was just to go away, get out of my house, get out of my city. I went to Medford High School, but even in grade school and junior high, I fantasized about leaving.
We can't just go, like, oh that'd be cool then not do it. So it's one of those weird things. You gain all these things on your journey. You get smarter. It's interesting how you are who you are in high school in a lot of ways. When I look at my friends, I feel no different about them than I did when I was in high school. I mean that in a great way. They've taken on a micro scale what they were doing and making it bigger.
I grew up an only child, and I always felt as if I didn't fit in. In middle school, in grammar school, and even high school, I just didn't feel like I fit in.
Maybe you don't like your job, maybe you didn't get enough sleep, well nobody likes their job, nobody got enough sleep. Maybe you just had the worst day of your life, but you know, there's no escape, there's no excuse, so just suck up and be nice.
You know when you see those guys and their sideburns are just a little too high? You don't need to have sideburns, but don't have to have them right above the ear. I knew a guy that did that in high school and I was like, 'What are you doing? Just let them down a little.'
I got in the school band and the school choir. It all hit me like a ton of bricks, everything just came out. I played percussion for a while, and stayed after school forever just tinkering around with different things, the clarinets and the violins.
It seems like the first law of Nature is that everybody likes to receive things, but nobody likes to feel grateful.