Category: Growing Up

Thoughts on childhood and growing up

3

Logarithmic Time and Getting Older

It’s been two years since I wrote a blog post. I can’t believe it. I also missed the 10th anniversary of my blog in August, though as I wrote many years ago, I don’t...

2

Gym Class: Not for Nerds

My least favorite class was always gym class. I never liked penmanship much either, but gym was far worse. Especially for a nerdy kid like me, gym was an hour a day of the...

1

Going Stag to Senior Prom

School seems so dumb sometimes, even for kids who like school. I took my schooling pretty seriously, to the point where I thought that everything else was a bunch of BS. Unfortunately for me,...

Crayon Box Time Machine 3

The Crayon Box Time Machine

One of the hardest things about growing up is striking the right balance between conformity and nonconformity. Every person who’s ever lived has an innate desire to fit in. We are, after all, social...

Print Shop Coca-Cola Halftone 1

Drafting Class and Print Shop

Sometimes you look back on your childhood and realize how much you were shaped by a certain experience. Something long forgotten memory comes to the forefront of your mind. An experience that seemed relatively...

Paul Rand IBM Spelling Bee 1

The ABCs of Spelling Bees

I’ve always been good at spelling. I usually got all A’s in elementary school. But my orthographic skills never really translated over to spelling bees. Despite my nerdiness, I never really excelled at these...

Bayeux Tapestry Dinner 4

Meeting Friends through Meetup

Somehow, in the six years I’ve been doing this blog, I neglected to write about a topic that’s near and dear to my heart: Meetup.com. I’ve met almost all of my friends through the...

Questionable Camping Sign 1

Growing Up with the Cub Scouts

There wasn’t a whole lot to do in Dupo, Illinois back in the late 1980s / early 1990s. Thankfully, I got involved in Cub Scouts. Most of the boys in my core group of...

MSU Spartan Texas Flag 2

A Spartan in Texas

When you’re in college, you’re surrounded by people wearing your school colors, and living on campus makes you feel like you’re at the center of the world. This was true for me at least,...

ASCII Art Radioactive Symbol 2

Depleted Uranium and the 1990s Internet

In my 10th grade physics class, we spent a good chunk of the spring semester talking about radioactivity. For our final project, our teacher assigned a range of essay topics about radiation and nuclear...