In retrospect, my blog about Checkers, my long cherished longboard provides an interesting insight to a very personal part of my life.  I’ve been longboarding since about the seventh grade and I can’t even begin to count the amount of time I’ve spent skating (I can say I can probably skate better than I can walk).  Longboarding has provided some of the best opportunities for me to escape from the craziness of life and think; it has provided clarity that we all seek.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t until just recently that I realized how important this clarity has been to me, and how often I forget about the multitude of thoughts and ideas that my rides with Checkers have provided.

So from here on out, the blog is taking a step in a new direction: “In Transition” (the title may change soon) is becoming a longboarding blog.  Fundamentally it will be a log of rides and trips: maps, pictures, hopefully some video as well.  But it will hopefully become more than that too; I want it to become a more regular insight into what I am thinking, planning.  For me, it will hopefully become a reference: a place to remind myself of what I want to do, where I came from, how I’ve grown.  For readers, hopefully it will an insight into a great friend, or just some dude that you found in a search.  Either way, hopefully incorporating longboarding into this blog will provide more frequent updates with a good twist.

Here’s some pics from skydiving in Hollister, CA

As most people know, I’ve moved frequently throughout my life.  Of the 22 years I’ve been around, my life breaks down like this, geographically: 15 years in New York (over 2 separate stays and various local moves); 4 years in Santa Clara, CA; 3 years in Pasadena, CA; 4 months in London, England; and 10 weeks in Denver, CO.  Since the 5th grade I’ve moved across the country 3 times, and haven’t stayed in the same place for more than 4 years at a time.  I think the finally tally comes to about 11 or so.  That’s a lot of moving, goodbyes, and changes for a person my age, and in some cases, more than a lot of people will experience in a lifetime.

I wouldn’t trade any of those moves for anything.  They’ve all taught me that everything happens for a reason, which will be unveiled when it is ready to be discovered by you.  Some of the moves I made were extremely hard, some were easy.  All of them came with a degree of uncertainty that kept me at the edge of my seat, ready to explore, embrace and learn from the place I was going to.  But most importantly each one of these moves added a layer to who I am.  Every time I’ve moved I have grown in ways that I can’t always explain or articulate, these changes simply allow me to better understand who I am and point me towards what I should be doing.

However, none of these moves and lessons would happen if it weren’t for the people I’ve met along the way.  The first lesson I learned (and the one I still reference the most) when I moved to Pasadena, CA was that friends are forever.  The friends and people you value the most will follow you where ever you go, and in a lot of cases, those relationships will only grow stronger.  Each and every place I have been has given me new friends and experiences that I could not replicate anywhere else.  For example: it was living in LA and listening to K-ROQ that I learned about punk and metal, two of my favorite musical genres.  At Fordham Prep, I can thank my friends there for the sarcasm and wit that I have today (as well as my love of snowboarding, shout out to Joe Leotta for that).  In London, I fell in love with Public Relations; and I was while in Denver, I proved to myself that I can handle the real world as it is after graduation.

And then there is Santa Clara.  I don’t even really know where to start on this, the friends, the experiences are all priceless.  And the lessons I’ve learned…well I don’t know if I’ve figured all of those out yet.  There are certain things I do know as I graduate: that I can be a professional; that whatever work I do, has to have a positive impact on this world; that I am ultimately the one in control and its up to me to steer my own ship.  There are so many other things that I could list as well, but won’t.  But all of the things I’ve learned could not have happened without the friends I’ve made and the fun and experiences I’ve had with them along the way.

At this point, as terrified as I am of leaving behind the life of a college student (something I don’t think could ever be beaten), I do walk away from my time at SCU satisfied with what I have done.  I’ve had as fulfilling a four years as anyone else in my year, have built friendships that will last forever, and I have a girl who I am too happy to call my girlfriend.

I guess this all sums up the current point of this blog, that just like all college seniors, I am a person in transition; that the uncertainty of what is ahead should not be a deterrent, but something to seize, to make our own.  And finally, that it is not where we are, but who we are with and what we do with those people that truly is the measure of our personal successes.

This post is for everyone I’ve met along the way, at SCU, in London, Denver, New York, all of you.  Thanks, and cheers.  Lets open the next chapter of our lives with the same excitement that we’ve opened the previous ones.

Oh yes, and before I forget, GO BRONCOS!

I need a more interpersonal experience with my work, knowing that what I’m doing will produce more than just a paper with a grade.  Some of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had have been through the internships I’ve had, writing press releases and working with the media to create stories for the public.  After seeing releases I’ve written and pitched make it into the news, I’ve realized that there are few things that are as rewarding as knowing that the work you do is making an impact on others, being read, watched, listened to, digested by the public.  That is when I know what I am doing is worthwhile.

Funny thing is that is the exact opposite of what we do as students.  Unless your paper inspires some sort of research or gets published in a journal, it is read by a professor, graded, returned to you and then left to die in a folder in your backpack.  No one else reads it, unless you share it.  Knowing that I can do better, bigger things via public relations and marketing has left me hungry for more, and ready to leave the classroom behind!

One of the things I’ve learned as an English major and also through working in Public Relations is that to successfully portray a story or event, it needs to be framed in the proper context.  For all of us about to graduate college, there are a lot of ways we can frame the past four years of lives: the friends we’ve made, the places we’ve gone, our maturity now vs. when we walked onto campus, there are plenty of ways to look back on our college lives.  For me I think the most meaningful way to look at it is through the time I spend with Checkers.  I’ve learned the roads and pathways on Santa Clara’s campus like the back of my hand because of the countless hours I’ve spent riding around on Checkers:  snaking through students going to campus, cruising with some music on during a sunset, or rolling through Mission Gardens, Checkers has seen every inch of this Campus.

As much as we want things to last forever, take our lives as college students for example (I think this is one of the best lifestyles you can find), it always has to come to an end.  I learned this early when I had to move to Pasadena, CA.  However, you can create memories that last forever, and that is what I thank Checkers for.  It’s pretty remarkable that I’ve been able to ride the same board since 7th grade and I think that my time with Checkers is coming to a close, but I will always have those countless memories of skating and escaping the world around me thanks to my four-wheeled friend.  So as I prepare to move on from college and thank everyone that has been close to me over the years, its time to put Checkers up on my wall.  I do it fondly because a memory, and great friends are forever.

However I’ve found that simply taking a job should not be our goal as we leave the SCU bubble.  Our Jesuit education has taught us to be much better people than that.  As students leaving a Jesuit university, and after 8 years of learning from the Jesuits in my case, we’ve been taught that not only should your education keep you alive and pay the bills after you leave college, but what we do should have an impact on the world around us.  We have been graced with talents that are impossible to duplicate, so we should be using them to create the biggest impact possible.

In a way that’s the hardest thing to achieve, is to find that job, that position or role that allows you to do the good that we all should be perpetuating in this world.  How do we work our talents into a picture that is run by large companies and will take away your individuality if you’re not aware of yourself? How do we maintain ourselves.  Are these questions that I will continue to be asking myself or will I answer them at some point and when will I know if I have answered them?

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Musical Musings:

• I can’t for the new T.I. album in August; “I’m Back” is on point, just like we all thought he’s gonna come out of jail better than ever.  
• Kanye better go back to his old style on “Good Ass Job” or else he’s going to pay the price for how strange 808′s was.  Note to artists: don’t make an album as personal as Kanye did on 808′s and Heartbreak.
• Hendrix’s Valley of Neptune is amazing.  Perfect for a roof on a lazy Friday after class.

The first “chapter” ended when I left my hometown of Larchmont, NY for the first to move to Pasadena, CA.  It was an ugly close to my first 10 years, I thought that leaving my hometown at 10 years old was the practically the end of my existence.  I was too close-minded to realize there was a world outside of Larchmont and I took my anger out on my parents because I thought they could do more to change the circumstances.  But it turns out that first move to Pasadena was a crash course in saying goodbye that would define who I am now.

I moved back to New York for high school 3 years after arriving in Pasadena, and then 4 years later was on a plane to Santa Clara University.  So clearly, I’ve said a few goodbyes and opened and closed quite a few “chapters” of my life since I arrived in Pasadena as a naive 6th grader.  But those lessons I learned from my Mom and Dad about saying goodbye and moving on resonate just as strongly now as they did then.  My parents explained to me early on that there are things that we will come to love in life: people, places, events, ideas but that a lot of times these aren’t permanent (sorry for the skepticism) but those memories last forever.  So its more important to cherish those memories for what they’ve done for you than to mourn leaving them behind.  For me thats always meant building friendships that will last forever and maintaining them any way possible and keeping those special memories as fresh as possible.

Moving on from college is strange because not only am I leaving SCU and the memories and friends that have come along with it, but also the only lifestyle I’ve known in my 22 years of existence.  Its time to leave behind being a student and adjust into whatever lifestyle will come next as I enter the “real world”. But now its harder than ever to simply cherish what I’ve had because I am leaving behind a way of life that I have come to love as student: learning, working hard, and living with the greatest friends I’ve had to this point.  But keeping in mind the wisdom my parents shared with me 12 years ago when I had to say my first real goodbyes, I’m just cherishing the twilight of my college days with some amazing people and spectacular memories.

WELL.  I finally got to experience Robin Williams’ magic, and I can say that its transformed my outlook as an English major.  In it, Williams’ character is an English teacher that teaches poetry as a form of expression, not a quantifiable art form (Welton Academy prefers the latter), and by doing so opens the students’ minds to new pathways of thought.  Eventually, the faculty become threatened by Williams’ methods, and begin to look for reasons to fire him from the faculty.  As it turns out, one his students decides to become an actor against his parents’ wishes which leads to the student taking his own life, giving the faculty the reason they need to ask for Williams to leave the academy.  The film ends with a dramatic departure during which Williams’ closest students (those that founded the Dead Poets’ Society) give him a salute during class.

I guess the moral here is to do what is right for you, to explore your capabilities and apply what you learn to yourself constantly.  Doing so allows us a freedom that is otherwise seldom found in ourselves, a freedom that is easy find and maintain as long as we remain true to our roots as humans and students of life.

GAHHH I can’t wait for powder turns at Snowbird this weekend!