15 years in the making!

BEEP....BEEP.....BEEP....ever since I can remember that dreadful noise coming from my alarm clock meant getting up and strapping a ridiculously too heavy bag to my now crooked back and heading for long hours at school. Well after 15 years in the making I finally finished school and received my bachelors degree. I now have that peaceful feeling again that I've long since missed. Its that feeling you get when you go to sleep happy because there isn't any homework lingering overhead. In celebration of this monumental event in my life I wanted to reminisce on the highlights of my last 15 years of school:

Preschool: I attended preschool in a small room in the back of Crescent Valley High School. It was there as a young lad that I received my first kiss. I was sitting in the back of the room on a chair waiting for someone to pick me up when this girl came walking straight for me. She had one thing on her mind and that was to leave a wet one on my face. There was no stopping her the red of her lips came at me like a missle. She planted a kiss on the cheek and walked away. Sadly I don't remember who my young Juliet is. Well that started the beginning of a wonderful new past time :) Just kidding mom.

Elementary School: I went to Hoover school for grades 1-5. Hoover has a special place in my heart because it was also the place where my dad took me (and probably many of the other siblings) to learn to ride a bike. After learning I was able to ride my bike to school with Devin and our neighbor Kurt Harper. I also learned to overcome my speech problem and say my "R's" there. I can now correctly say "girl" instead of saying "gurl". It was here that I had my first crush on a girl (Allison Wales), burnt my finger, ate school lunches, had intense 6 square games, tried to beat Leo, the playground champion, at teatherball, learned my times tables, and played the best game in the world heads up 7-up. Also who could forget the jog-a-thons with Mrs. Strowbridge, where I bugged everyone to give me pennies for every lap I did. Didn't think this little 7 yr old could run 42 laps did you? I also starred in a school assembly by making that popping noise when you stick your finger inside your mouth against your cheek and flick out. Apparently I was one of the kids that could do it the best...pop!

Middle School: Some of you may remember pictures like this. Dad probably took one of you out by the old oak every year on the first day of class. With my hair parted and wearing my new 'Gotcha' shirt I was all set to make my grande entrance at the new school. These next three years of public school education took place at Cheldelin middle school. Many new things happened once I entered middle school. I started getting involved in school sports. My basketball glory moment came in the Cheldelin gym when I fell to the ground at about the free throw line. I was quickly surrounded by 4 defenders who were waving there arms like starving monkeys and I had the last banana. All my teammates were blocked and the only open view I had was at the hoop. Out of options, I threw the ball towards the hoop. Amazingly it went in. Who cares who won the game....I think I became a hero that day. It was also in middle school that starting my musical interest by blowing through a trombone. This instrument when extended was probably taller then I was. I played the trombone in the school jazz band for a year which was a ton of fun. I quickly made friends and started a rowdy band of hooligans with two other tromboners, Matt Jasperson and Zach Payne. We nick-named ourselves the "3 bones". Our goal was to have fun, pick on the band geeks and cause grief for our band teacher Mr. Janes. Our favorite game was "musical chairs". The game was played by the three of us swapping seats as the band practiced. Then when Mr. Janes cut the band off we quickly sprawled out purposely covering as many seats as we could leaving one of us to be left standing or falling on the ground. The game was quickly broken up by Mr. Janes who scattered us throughout the band. I spent the duration of the next few practices feeling very out of place in the clarinet section. In middle school I also saw my first school fights, got caught up in latest fads like poggs and magic cards. I remember when Kurt Harper had a pogg birthday party and lets just say that I was intune with my slammer. I came home with a lot more poggs that night.

High School: My four years of high school was spent at Crescent Valley High School. I continued to play school sports and played on the soccer team for 3 years before being cut my senior year. Being cut was hard but I joined the cross country team and was good enough to make the traveling team. It was a good year to join because the team traveled to Washington and Hawaii to run meets. The trip to hawaii was awesome! We ran one meet, practiced once and spent the other 5 days snorkeling, shopping, visiting the dole plantation, body surfing and hanging out on the beaches. One of the stupidest but daring moments of my life happened on the north shore in Hawaii. There is a huge rock near the shore that the locals climb to the top and dive off. After jumping a few times into the ocean below I decided I wanted to try a back flip. I climbed up the rock and stood with my back facing the water trying to gather the nerve. The locals would egg me on and demonstrate how easy it was by fliping off and slapping the water real hard. They would then surface screaming that "certain" body parts hurt. Finally after staring at the water for probably about 45 minutes I felt myself falling backwards toward the water. I don't ever concsiously remember making the desiosn to jump but as my feet were leaving the ground I remember thinking "what the crap am I doing?!" By that time it was too late. With a SLAP!...It was my side that hit first as I rotated awkwardly. I came out of the water alive but with my side in pain.

In band the "3 bones" were back for more trouble in high school. I was nick-named "skinny bone", Matt was "tall bone" and Zach was "fat bone" for obvious physical reasons. This time we enjoyed using our long slides to open the cases from the saxphone players infront of us and steal things from inside and then hiding them in our band locker. We also would fill our slides up with water and blow it out the bell or drip it from our spit valves among other general bullying like bumping the elbows of the musicains infront of us with our slides. These were my dark bully days which I have long since given up . We played in the marching band (winning Band Day twice), pep band and competed in competitions.

I also attented and graduated from early morning seminary. I went to prom my junior year with Shannon Harmon and went to my senior prom with Janna Hickerson. I invited Janna over one night and when her green Tarus pulled up the road I was still unprepared. so I had the Jensen girls distracter her as I set things up. When I gave the signal she was told to go down to the pond where I had a fishing pole waiting. she reeled in the line and found a fish that had a special message saying "Of all the fish in the sea you're the one for me". Watching....and waiting...for the right moment I smoothly emerged from the weeds that kept me hidden from sight and paddled our red canoe accross the pond toward her. I loaded her up and guided the canoe back across the pond to our waiting candle light, fast food, chinese dinner. During the dinner I preformed a magic trick where I forced (magic term for causing someone to pick a card of your choosing) her to choose the queen of hearts. I then mixed the card back in the deck and tried to relocate it. My every attempt failed, purposely of course because at that very moment the gray Izuzu's engine roared to life and sped down the hill with Devin at the wheel. His destination was the Hickerson home. He got there and had Janna's mom careful place the jumbo fortune cookie I had made for her on her bed. Her fortune was a qeen of hearts playing card that had the message, "You've stolen my heart, now won't you be my queen and go to the prom with me?" The answer was in the affirmative.

My last couple of years I met some of my best and life long friends; Dominic Ciciriello, Gerrick Lindberg, Marc Andresen, Michelle Harsono and Alyson Emmett. We made countless memories which would take too long to tell. I will mention one revolutionizing sport we made up called "couching". Dom, mark and I attached wheels to the bottom of a few couches and then rode them down the street bobsled style. It was way fun as the wheels would fly off and begun dragging on the pavement causing sparks to fly behind us until we came to a stop by smashing into the curb at the bottom.

College: My first college experience was at Linn Benton Community College because I didn't get accpeted into BYU. This school hardly challenged me though. I felt like it was easier then high school. I tried to take my ID picture in a clown suit but I guess it was against school policy to wear a wig so instead I wore my referee jersey and spiked my hair. This was the next craizest thing that I thought of and it turned out to look more like a prison shot...plus they got my name wrong. Graduating from high school seemed to transform many of my friends to particpate in nightly activites that I didn't care for. During this time is when I saw drug and alcohol use-- neither of which appealed to me and which I had long before decided never to use.

After my mission I was accpeted at Brigham Young Univeristy. Going to school in Provo has been such a wonderful experience. I've met many wonderful people and have had so much fun. During these years I spent a lot of time seeking outdoors adventures starting with the BYU outdoor adventure club. I've spent my free time traveling throughout Utah and other states hiking, rock climbing, camping, wakeboarding, snowboarding, splunking, snow shoeing, snow camping and canyoneering. My first job was on campus at the BYU heating plant a.k.a. the Cole Mines. Did you know, that during certain months BYU will burn 65-70 tons of coal a day? Its from working there that my friends joke about me catching the black lung. A few other student workers and I took on the name of the Rat Pack. We would scour the "secret" underground tunnels at BYU and find new passageways, hidden time capsuls and staircases that lead to nowwhere. We would make noises through the grates and talk to people on the sidewalks above us . We'd say things like, "help! they have us trapped down here!". Once I almost lost a dollar because I set Mr. Washington as bait through one of the slits in a grate and waited for someone to try and pick it up. I barley managed to pull it back from a co-ed's grasp in time. I also bought my first car in college from Jared and Alyssa. I've been able to learn a lot about cars by having to work on it to keep it going. It's a pretty sweet ride.

About my junior year I decided to go into prosthetics and so I picked Biopohysics as my major because it filled the most pre-requisits required for the prosthetic program. My program emphasised in three main areas: biology, physics, and chemistry. In a nut shell biopyhsics in the study of biological processes by the use of physical principles. I decided to throw in a chemistry minor since I only had to take one extra class. The following is a video that does a good job of pretty much showing what I studied. Its called the "inner life of a cell". Its amazing what every cell in your body is doing hundreds of times every day. I studied all about the different proteins and structures you'll see in the video and used physical principles like newtons laws of motion and kinetics to calculate movements and reactions. I helped do research in two laboratories. First with Dr. Woodbury, we studied SNARE proteins and then with Dr. Sudweeks in which we studied acetacholine receptors. Well that's been the last 15 years in a nut shell. I've now started a new chapter in life by going to prosthetic school and starting a careear. Time will tell what experiences that will bring. I will miss Provo and all my friends here when I move.