Top 10 Most Thrilling Academic Moments of My High School Career

 Just as a precursor to my list, I would like everyone to know that I am fully aware that no matter how objectively I phrase this, it will have the capacity to sound pretentious.  That is merely a product of my achievements (see, I told you).  So I'm just going to go for it.

10) Economics Stocks Game: I won the stock market game in Econ. last year.  No one would admit it now, but that game was filled with "dedication and clarity,... like lighting a fire by rubbing two sticks" (McEwan 109).  To be entirely honest, I only won because one of my stocks, initially valued at about $20 per share, had its company bought out by an enormous corporation.  So for a short while the stock jumped from the original $20 to around $1000 per share (the price of the larger corporation) due to computer error.  Naturally, I sold my hundreds of shares quickly.

9) Becoming best friends with Mr. Maas: Don't listen to what anyone else says - I am Mr. Maas's best friend that is a student.  Just the other day, as we did integrals together, he asked to borrow my pencil, and the "nature of the request, its intimacy and self-conscious reflection on [our] friendship... created... an uncomfortable emotional proximity" (McEwan 54).

8) Spanish Four Video Projects: If you were to ask any of our school's Spanish teachers about either the movie Zapatalones III (ZIII) or Obi Wan Quijote, the teacher would inevitably know of our legendary movies.  Whereas other groups used the limitations of the project (it had to be in Spanish after all) as "a mask for mediocrity" (McEwan 66), my group (Chris Lange, Brian Binder, Austin Sauey, and myself) crafted epic 25-minute films.

7) Winning the Springfest Dodgeball Tournament last year as a member of East Washington Mafia: Although this moment is not technically academic in nature, it occurred during a school day.  We staunchly refused "to be a martyr to them" (Kesey 157).

6) 199/200.  On the Amsterdam Essay.  An 8+/9- speaks for itself.  However, I'm legally obligated to include a quote, so I'll continue - my classmates clearly wondered "how it was possible that anyone could manage such an enormous thing [I] was" (Kesey 161).

5) National Merit Finalist: It was truly an honor to be selected as a National Merit Finalist.  It allowed me to represent our school on a national level, and it's an opportunity that a very select few received in our school.  It was then that I realized that "everything [I've]  done was with reason" (Kesey 266).

4) Voted most intelligent (and funniest) by the senior class: Yes, it's true.  Essentially, I now have an established comeback for anything Donley says.  He knows that "there are principles at stake that one cannot surrender," so he is forced to answer to me (Wilde 44).

3) The formation of the Dream Team and our two victories: Perhaps the four most decorated males at our school joined forces one day to form what is clearly the most vaunted team in A.P. English.  Our opponents, of course, wish that we were not so intelligent and "not quite so very alluring in appearances," but such is the burden of success (Wilde 35).


2) Taking the SAT at 23:80 (military time, with a few extra minutes) at 2380 Enlightenment Boulevard, in room 2380 as the 2nd of 3 boys in my family (and 8th of my extended family, 0 of whom are girls) to take test.  I am now quite relieved to be done, as "even these metallic problems have their melodramatic side" (Wilde 23.80)

1) My acceptance letter from Duke: This day validated all the others in my academic career.  Please don't speak badly of Duke - "only people who can't get into it do that" (Wilde 47).  With the additions of the esteemed John Shoemaker and Thomas Donley to our freshman class at Duke, the future seems bright.