Oh, Nostalgia

This blog is dedicated to my good friend Nicole. It wouldn't exist without her. The only reason I even have a blog is because I had to make an account to post a response to one of Nicole's entries on her page (to post responses to my blog you don't need an account).

Nicole's dad is Black and her mom is Jewish, just like me. She grew up in Philadelphia where her father is still a pretty successful painter. Now she lives in South Korea and is either 16 hours ahead of California or 8 hours behind. I just know it's about 2 a.m. there.

Last night I was in a nostalgic mood and started Friendstering and Myspacing everyone I knew in HS and college. I ended up on a string of Friendster that yielded almost the entire 9th floor of Rubin Hall (1998-1999), where Nicole and I met during my sophomore year at NYU. First I was curious, then regretful, then sad.

That was definitely a strange year. I wanted to take another crack at being a freshman because I saw my first year of college as a failure. So I lived in a mostly freshman dorm, two blocks from Washington Square, and hung out with a lot of freshman. I went to Africa between semesters and quickly changed my major from Philosophy to Cultural Anthropology. I started dating my first serious girlfriend and she cheated on me within a week or so. She ended up having to leave school towards the end of April for personal reasons. That October I would visit her twice a day in the psychiatric ward of the NYU hospital. We continued problematically dating through the fall of 2001 and a bit into early 2002. We even tried to get an apartment together right before we finally broke up for good that January.

Ever since I graduated from NYU (May 2001) I've wanted to get back onto a college campus. Sometimes I've wanted to pursue a Master's degree, sometimes law, a couple times I've considered business, or even just to work as a full-time employee at a college. I now find myself with a job at UCLA Extension, taking classes in Film Scoring, and living in Westwood, CA.

On the average day, my job is a pretty good place to write in a blog.