Here I stand on the cusp of inspiration.  I’ve written so much throughout high school, from short stories to research papers, but this took the greatest amount of courage to write.  I know I’m not doing a very good job at self promoting, but I might as well be writing my own eulogy here.  I have to make the first real choice that matters and I don’t know where to start.  This is where my passion for technology comes into play and begins to define what I want to do later in life.  Throughout my high school career, I was viewed as the stereotypical “computer nerd.”  Whenever anything computer related breaks, fingers were always pointed at me to fix it.  While I did enjoy the opportunity to prove myself,  I didn’t know as much as people believed.  Yeah, I taught myself the basics, but there’s only so much you can learn on your own.  I hope that moving on to college will give me the opportunity to make my hobby a career.

Opportunity is one of the main things that I am looking forward to.  The community I grew up in was small and almost cliche with its neatly cut lawns and friendly people who seem to all know each other.  You would think that things seemed almost too perfect and that cthulhu lived underground somewhere, or that we secretly ate people, or something else that’s sinister.  I can assure you that I neither worship a giant squid monster, nor do I eat people.  There are definite benefits to going to a small school, such as the connection with other students and teachers which is not found in many larger schools.  That being said, there are definite disadvantages, such as the limited amount of opportunity.  Hopefully, the level of opportunity that I am expecting is far beyond the level I received in the small community that I grew up in.

I’m also interested in meeting other people with similar interests.  Another one of the downsides of going to a small school is that the lack of people allows you to stand out a bit more.  While this does sound like a complete benefit, the individuality does make it harder to find people with similar interests.  In my case, this was true.  I was really the only one who was passionate about computer systems.  While this did make me feel smart, it also left me with little to talk about with anybody else.  On multiple occasions, I would get really excited about something and have no one to share my excitement with.  When I was planning out my first computer build, I was ecstatic to the point of spontaneous combustion, but that excitement didn’t transfer well to my friends.  Perhaps I’m simply painting myself as insecure, but meeting other people who share the same passion is one of my sincerest hopes.  I don’t believe this is an irrational hope either.  Associating yourself with similar people is part of human nature.

In a way, I suppose this essay is simply a fancy way of saying that my hopes for moving forward are similar to everybody else’s.  All high school seniors and everyone who chooses to go to college does so in the hope that they can pursue a career that interests them.  I guess I’m trying to say that my current situation will make life at college seem radically different from what I’m accustomed to.  Change may be scary, but this will be welcome.      

Next year, Reilly plans to attend RIT with a major in Computer Engineering.