I can honestly say that I feel for those high-schoolers who right as I am typing this are scrambling to complete their summer assignments. Finishing stuff on the last day before school started was an annual tradition (up until last year when I completed roughly 1/3 of my work in the morning of the first day ) for me. Waiting ’til the last minute wasn’t a particularly bad thing, though. The saying of the words “I’m done” thirty minutes before heading to school is amongst the greatest of adolescent feelings. Completing everything days and weeks in advance of school is a bit anti-climatic, no? This year I don’t have to worry about any of the shit that I had to worry about for four straight summers! It’s truly amazing. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Strangely, though, I wouldn’t necessarily mind going back to high school per se, provided there were no summer assignments to discuss. I have nothing to compare to not going back there. Anyway, as classes soon start, I soon will have to worry. It’s been a top-notch summer in as much as I read purely for self-pleasure, entertainment, and intelligence instead of problem solving and group discussion. Oh yeah and until this summer I hated to read. That’s what honors and AP English classes (with corresponding summer assignments) did to me. And a final general note: fiction sucks. It made me hate reading before I even had to read. God bless the people who actually read assigned fiction for English class.

Glen