Choosing to go to East Catholic High School in Manchester, rather than Coventry High, provided me with a new, blank slate of sorts, as I was beginning at a new school with people who hadn't grown up with me. There were enough people from Coventry schools to drag along some emotional baggage, but I was able to redefine myself to some degree during those years. High school in Manchester also brought me into contact with Nova Game Designs, a small company which made fantasy and war games such as Lost Worlds and Ace of Aces. I spent many a Friday night in playtesting sessions at Nova's offices, and made friends with some intelligent, mature people, a refreshing change from most of my fellow high school students. Eventually I wound up doing part-time work for them after school, which was a much more pleasant way to enter the job market than working at the local grocery or department store. My junior year in high school was probably the most enjoyable overall of my adolescence: I was on the honor roll at school for the first time (by the sneaky but still legitimate device of choosing not to take any math courses), working after school at a job I enjoyed with people I liked, received my driver's license by the second semester, and even met my first girlfriend in the summer between junior and senior years.
Senior year began on somewhat of a downturn, as Nova could no longer afford to pay me, so I was forced to join the ranks of the barely-above-minimum-wage kids working in the local retail establishments. I obtained a job at the Bradlee's department store in the Manchester Parkade, which had its ups and downs. The most valuable lesson I learned from my Bradlee's employment was that if you are much more intelligent than your nominal superiors, you can get away with a lot.
The end of high school also means the start of the great American tradition of
applying to colleges, and by dint of some good recommendations, high SAT
scores, and fast talking to explain my lack of math courses for a full year, I
was able to get into the College of my Choice. My early decision application
to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute was inspired by a campus visit in the
summer of 1985, specifically the tour of the Voorhees Computing Center, where
in addition to all the nifty equipment and the world's coolest-looking
computer labs, I also noticed the bulletin board of the
1986, the year of my graduation from high school, also brought with it another
unique opportunity. My father's employers, the Sara Lee Corporation, had a
scholarship program to send the children of employees on a foreign exchange
program for the summer. I was encouraged to apply, and somehow managed to be
one of the seven people selected for the program. This gave me a true
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to spend a summer living with a family in
Germany, seeing a foreign country on a personal level. This was my first (and
so far, only) trip out of North America, and although I had studied German for
three years in high school, I was still a bit nervous about the whole concept.
There were many reasons for this: in addition to the language and cultural
barriers, the mid-80's were seeing an increase in international terrorism, and
1986 was the year of the Chernobyl disaster, which had most of Europe worried
about fallout and radioactive contamination. But I and my family decided that
it would be foolish to waste this opportunity, and so, a few weeks after
graduation from high school, I boarded a plane (for the first time in my life)
and made my way across the Atlantic.
My experiences in Germany could probably fill a book by themselves, but
suffice it to say that I found it to be one of the most educational and
rewarding summers I have ever spent, not to mention a lot of fun. I visited
such interesting places in Germany as Heidelberg, Fulda, Koblenz, and the
Niederwald Memorial and several castles along the Rhine, but most of my summer
was spent in the small town of Bad Schwalbach, just north of Wiesbaden,
participating in the ordinary life of a high school student on summer
vacation, along with my host brother Gerald. Since my host parents spoke no
English, I got plenty of practice in my German, and was quite fluent by the
end of my eight-week stay there. Unfortunately I haven't kept in practice with
the language as much as I'd have liked to in the intervening years, and I've
forgotten quite a lot since then.
Upon returning from Germany, I had barely a week to pack up and embark on
another major move: my college years at RPI. My time in the lovely pile of
bricks on the Hudson known as Troy, New York lasted about twice as long as I'd
anticipated, as I wound up working for RPI's Information Technology Services
for five years after the end of my academic career. During these years, I
acquired much valuable knowledge of computers and the Internet, met many of
the people who are now my close friends, and did a great deal of exploring in
the Albany/Troy/Schenectady metropolitan area (often referred to by residents
as the "Capital District"), which is actually quite a nice area as small
American cities go.
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