Wow.
I think I just had the single most amazing year of my life.
In 2008, I:
- Completed an awesome internship with an actual production company and got a nice taste of “city” life.* The light and mostly fun workload, combined with the laid-back mood of Winter Term also made it one of the best months of my time in college.
- Watched the first one of my friends my age get married.
- Had one of the best weekends of college when Stephanie and Ashley came to visit and we got to see Elon’s amazing all-out production of Phantom of the Opera.
- Spent my spring break traveling all the way down to Mississippi, a state I had never been to before, on a mission trip to rebuild hurricane-devastated areas.
- Made something like a dozen new amazing videos, a few of which I posted the other day.
- Watched Bill Clinton stump for his wife** at Elon and tell us how North Carolina was “Clinton Country.”
- Watched North Carolina be the state to finally end Hillary’s chances of winning the Presidency while covering a rally for future Governor Bev Perdue, whom I got to help interview.
- Wrapped up an amazing four years at Elon with an epic but surreal farewell weekend and graduation ceremony.
- Uprooted myself for the eighth time in four years and moved back home.
- Slowly rotted away at home as I applied for nearly 200 jobs and got literally about five non-automated responses over five months.
- Went on an amazing family cruise to Bermuda***
- Uh…saw The Dark Knight?
- Had and ended what was certainly the most interesting relationship that I’ve ever been in.
- Watched my bank (Wachovia) drive itself to near-collapse and get bought out.
- Went on a shocking and memorable mission trip with my church to freshly hurricane-devastated parts of Texas, which I took video footage of (and still need to edit).
- Learned that the (non-religiously affiliated) camp where I had stayed during the earlier mission trip had closed because the owners were being investigated for embezzling donation money to the tune of half a million dollars.
- Visited my grandmother and toured our nation’s Capital. The actual Capital Building, not the entire city.
- Watched Obama win the election and, more importantly, continue my Cal Ripken Jr.-like streak of picking the winning President going.
- Learned that I had finally secured the job in American Samoa for certain just in time to get to tell everyone at Homecoming about it.
- Went to my first Homecoming as an Alumni.
- Uprooted myself for the ninth time in just over four years and moved to AMERICAN FREAKING SAMOA!
- Spent a weekend in Las Vegas
- Started an entirely new job and life here on The Rock.
- Survived my first monsoon.
- Spent my first Thanksgiving and Christmas apart from my family.
- Learned that my iPhoto albums are a great way to look over the past year.
An amazing year, even with five months of doing almost nothing. The best part is that there’s at least a page of things to say about every item above.
Yeah, wow indeed.
*If you can call Greensboro a city.
**Somehow, that phrase sounds dirty.
***Possibly the island quasi-nation least like the island quasi-nation that I’m currently living on.
