Small Beginnings

Author’s Note: In honor of the two-month countdown to the release of The TECH Project, here’s a note on how it all began, back in the Fall of 2005…

Team Erie Canal made its first appearance in March of 2006, at the Erie Canal locks in Grand Rapids, Ohio.  But just because they weren’t seen until March of 2006 doesn’t mean that they didn’t exist beforehand…

In early 2004, a bioengineer at the Department presented a new formula to the Director that the Department had been trying to discover for years: a formula that would create the perfect soldier.

According to the bioengineer – one Dr. Andrew Nobill – the formula would turn the person to whom it was exposed into a superhuman, one stronger and faster than the average human with above-average intelligence.  The Director was, at first, a little pessimistic regarding the new formula, as Nobill had been beaten out by another scientist, and the project was put on hold.

Fast-forward to early 2005.  The formula that the other scientist had produced proved to be faulty, granting its recipients – boys in the early stages of puberty – strange abilities, but without the added strength and speed, with only a slight increase in their average IQ – because though one had gone from a 125 to a 156 in IQ and another had gone from 132 to 163, the third had gained nothing.

Disappointed in what they had thought to be a huge breakthrough in biological sciences, the Department turned instead to Andrew Nobill’s creation.

A new high school was set up to create a pool from which to choose subjects, with the pretense that all students would be guaranteed a job within the Department after graduation.  The top students in the city were chosen from several applicants to attend the school: the most intelligent, the most focused, the most athletic.

Then the selection of the six-man team began.

To the great irony of its creator, though, the six “men” who were best-suited to make up the team comprised of two boys and four girls.

The first, most obvious choice was Zoe Lee, a very athletic girl who had been a part of a softball league for years.  Her physical fitness as well as her obvious teamwork and leadership skills (she had been the captain) made her the perfect choice for the team.

The second-most-obvious choice was Juliet Martin, a smaller and quieter girl than the boisterous Zoe who spent a few years coaching soccer for young children.  She had quite a bit of experience working with others, as she had spent so much time working with kids, and she was also very bright.

The third choice was a very smart, very talented ballet dancer named Ian Drake.  Though in his interview he’d been a little awkward, Ian proved to be very knowledgeable and very focused, fairly decisive for a fourteen-year-old.  His good physical health and brilliance were the deciding factors in keeping him as part of the team.

After the first three were chosen, there were several contenders for the following three positions.  In the mix were a few boys, including one Griffin O’Malley, who was passed over because of his general apathy for the world, and only two girls.

Out of the five male choices, only one was chosen to become part of the team.  Gordy Johnson was a junior high hockey and football player, bulky with muscles even at fourteen.  His grades were not exemplary, but his testing scores revealed a complex mind with strong convictions, which led to his eventual inclusion on the team.

The two girls on the list were also included in the team, but on a sort of probation, as Nobill is not quite sure if the two girls will be a good fit for the team.

Maria Aguinaldo was accepted to the school for her intelligence as well as the fact that she was bilingual, and she was a candidate for the team because of her history as a ballroom dancer and her strong physical background.  But her temper – as well as her history of working poorly with others – led Nobill to place her on probation until she proved she could do well on a team.

Chloe Sibylle, on the other hand, was a hip-hop dancer at the city’s most prestigious studio, both used to and good at working well with others.  Her physical fitness was just where it needed to be for her body to accept the formula, but she showed no particular scholarly inclination, preferring to work at her dancing rather than schoolwork, which worried Nobill enough to put her on the probation list as well.

The team fully assembled, it was put upon Dr. Nobill to administer the formula – and see what the six teens would become.

To find out more about how the Team Erie Canal Heroes came into being, check back in – a new story will be released at a later date!

College and the (non)Coffee-Drinker

When I was in high school, the popular thing to do was grab an energy drink.

That was all I heard: Monster this and Red Bull that and Rockstar is pretty cool and so on and so forth until my head started going in circles just like anybody actually reading this massive run-on sentence is probably suffering just at this moment.

I could never figure out what was so great about energy drinks.  My first boyfriend (sophomore year) had me drink a sip of something labeled “Sobe” and I started shaking all through American Studies.  I tried some Monster when I was out on a (rather disastrous) adventure with my best friend and didn’t like that, either.

After all my little taste-tests, I’d finally settled on drinking nothing but Mountain Dew to get a quick energy fix – much different than my beloved characters in The TECH Project, who can’t drink Mountain Dew at all – fairly early on in high school.  I held steady even throughout my senior year, when stress and tests abounded.

But all that changed when I went to college and started working at the newspaper.

I was talking about my job in the previous post, but only briefly: I work as a copyeditor at our campus paper, which is highly educational.  For example, I think I now know every single way humanly possible in which to prevent H1N1, commonly known as the swine flu.

What I never mentioned, however, is that my job begins at 4 on Sundays and 6 on Wednesdays – and doesn’t end until 1 or 2 in the morning.

Now, the pay isn’t great, but bad pay is better than no pay, and I like it that I’ll have some previous employment in my major when I go to find a job.  But the late hours seriously drag on me, especially on days like today when my extracurricular (and non-paid) activities mean that I’m up at 9:30 in the morning, acting as a runner til 6, then running to work where I’ll be til 1 or 2.  (I was up til 2 last night as well, but that’s another story.)

So I have discovered, in the process of walking to work, that having a nice, cool, refreshing can of Mountain Dew just won’t cut it when the weather outside is 40 degrees and it’s raining.

Therefore, I picked up a brand-new habit that I know my mommy wouldn’t be proud of: drinking coffee.

Coffee is among on of the most addictive substances in the world, just after nicotine and being a rock star.  While I’d much rather be a rock star than a coffee-drinker, I’m just going to have to settle for the closer-to-home of the two.  But the caffeine is seriously pleasing.

However, I do have a few limits on my coffee-drinking indulgence:

1. I will only drink cafe mocha.
2. I will NOT drink Starbucks.
3. I will only drink it when it’s raining, snowing, or exceptionally windy.
4. I only buy Einstein Bros. Regular-sized Cafe Mocha, always hot and always with whipped cream.

Those probably sound pretty picky, but I have some good reasons for that.

First off, Starbucks is disgusting.  Not even joking.  It tastes like someone threw mud in a toaster oven, scraped off what was left behind, and brewed it into coffee.  And that’s AFTER putting whipped cream on it.  Ew.

Second, I only drink it in poor weather conditions because it is nice and warm, like the grown-up version of hot chocolate, which is nice.

Third, the only coffee I actually DO like is Einstein Bros. Regular-sized Cafe Mocha.  I like chocolate, for one, and if I get a large the whipped cream just melts and becomes untasteable.  And no one makes a good cafe mocha like Einstein Bros.

What kind of coffee do you like?  Got any guilty pleasures?

Writers and Critics: Why Art Students Just Aren’t That Hardcore

Last night, I was at work – I work at my college campus paper as a copyeditor – and we discovered a Very Bad Article.

Now, we didn’t quite know what to do.  We felt that we couldn’t let this one slide, but we couldn’t really do much with the writer of the article being in the room at the time.  (He’s a nice guy and not a bad writer, jut apparently not cut out to do stage reviews.)  Finally, the copy chief jumped the Arts & Life editor when he stepped outside, and he agreed to have us do a digital copy (which we could rearrange and rewrite at will) rather than a hard copy, which we could only proofread.

My little copyediting escapade of last night brought to mind something that happened to me last year, when I was taking Drawing II.  It was a curious event that happened when we did our first critique.

Now, I like to draw, but I’m nothing spectacular as an artist – I can draw some excellent naked people, but that’s just about it.  My piece for that particular critique was not one that I was proud of: I’d made (in my eyes) mistakes beyond count and measure, the lighting was off, the symbolism was strange, and many other things were just WRONG about it that I couldn’t put my finger on.

Fast-forward to the critique.  I brought my pieces into class, expecting the critique to go similarly to the critiques I’d done in Creative Writing: brutally honest, meant to work like a chipper at a gem to take out all the crap and leave behind something priceless.

But something very odd happened.

I ended up receiving little to no constructive criticism.  Instead, I was told that “the mouse is cute” and “I like the atmosphere.”

I was so frustrated I wanted to pull out some of my own hair.  I like the atmosphere too!  But this composition’s a depressing one with a girl lying in a heap in a dirty alley, and you tell me that the mouse is cute?!  It’s not even a mouse!  IT’S A RAT!

It was then that I discovered the fundamental difference between graphic artists and writers.

Writers, by nature, have to stand up to harsh criticism.  Since our work can be fixed and reworked to no end, we get used to the harsh judgement – even of our writerly peers – and simply go to and fix them.  Artists, on the other hand, are apparently rather sensitive during their formative college years.

Am I right?  I’m pretty sure I  am… but, if I’m not, do correct me.

Graduation… or was it Prom?

The final month of my senior year was probably the busiest month of my entire educational career.  Between the National Honor Society induction ceremony, prom, and preparing for graduation, I had little room to sleep – let alone do anything else.  As May draws to a close, though, I find myself wondering what the “big finish” of high school really is.

I have always thought of it as being graduation.  After thirteen hard years of work, why shouldn’t it be?  But after living through my senior year, I’m starting to wonder…

Is the “big finish” of high school actually the prom?

Students – particularly girls – can spend hundreds of dollars on prom.  The clothes, the accessories, the prom bid itself – not to mention the “after-prom” activities and the pre-prom activities, which can range anywhere from a stop at a burger joint to a two-hour dinner at an upscale restaurant.

Do high schools sponsor “after-graduation” activities?  How many people spend upwards of $50 at a pre-graduation dinner?

For me, graduation will always be the big-bang ending, but I’ve never really been a typical student.  What part of high school do you think is the real “big finish”: graduation or prom?

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Last Olympian

I think this video says it all.