My Life Thus Far Act 4: UIUC & Triton Days Part 1 [July 2001 - May 2003]

Everyone got to see how my time was spent in high school. I was a busy kid with AP classes, sports, and a ton of activities that it seemed to have taken a lot out of me but somehow I made it through with shining colors here. I need to add a few details that I forgot to add in Act 3. For one thing, I had a great deal of friends at school which made my time there a lot of fun but grew really close with the cross country team and my few choir friends that I had. I also need to make a note on here that my junior year brought a different change for me too. Before I started my junior year in high school, I know that my brother and I were doing a great deal of altar serving in the 8:00 am mass and a lot of the church-goers knew us pretty well and saw us as great kids doing a great service to the church. It was from our dedication to being there on time that we were lucky to have been in the mass when Cardinal Francis George gave mass there. Anyways, that August before I started my junior year and my brother started his freshman year, we decided together that we were going to retire as altar servers. We told the priest that we were retiring at the end of the month since the new schedule was not made yet. Anyway that last Sunday, my brother and I did everything like what we were supposed to do and helped out. After Communion, he made the announcement that we were done after today which was something that shocked my brother, my mom and me. After the mass, some of the ladies thanked us for doing what we did and gave us a hug for everything. We even got some handshakes from some of the other churchgoers too. It was a nice day there.

Had to say something about that since it was something that I recall to this day on since it was sense of pride for doing something like this especially as long as I did it here. I knew many of the people I went to grade school with stopped after 8th grade or after their freshman year so for these people to thank me for keeping this up til the time I did was amazing.

That's what I needed to add to my third act of my life story thus far.

After graduation, I felt like I was on top of the world. I had gotten accepted to a great school that is considered to be a scholastic achievement. The school takes the top 20% of each school and gives them a chance to be a student in their school. I felt like I was ready to take on the challenges that were ahead of me and take them with stride here. That summer, I went to the summer camp along with a few other graduated seniors since we didn't want to say goodbye to the team just yet. I know that my brother signed up for camp since he liked track a lot and wanted to try cross country too especially since he would experience a coach that I can consider being a second father. So I did the runs and worked hard making sure that my brother would be ok in doing the work-outs too before I headed downstate.

Once that time came for me to move down to Champaign, I began to do a lot of things from packing stuff up that I would need for the dorms to buying my first laptop (a very old computer with Windows 98 n only like 5 gigs of hard drive space) to even getting some extra things for the walls. Well, when I got there on a Sunday for move-in day it was a bit of mass hysteria since I didn't know how things were going. I ended up having the people load stuff up on the cart and take it to my room with exception of my laptop.

So I checked in, met my roommate (I should break here and describe my roommate. His name is Jason and he was from NY. I know that he was in the rich area and was in Electrical Engineering while I was a Computer Engineering major so we were together for majors for the most part since our classes were about the same yet I only got some interests in his likings to Weezer and Radiohead. Beyond that, we really didn't click too well.) and got talking to some people. I met my RA and felt like he was a nice guy. I had a great deal of fun within those first few days since I checked out a lot of different things. On Monday, I went to the main fitness center since there were some big things going on out there and I hung out with my roommate and some of his friends there and saw all the different things out there. On Tuesday, I ended up hitting the Quad and did a lot of different things from signing up for clubs to doing a Big Brother program (will write on that a bit later). Anyways, it was there that I joined the fraternity Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia. While I can share on some things, most things I will keep silent on since it is a secret in the frat that I cannot share with anyone but my fellow brothers.

So let's move on from that point to a new one here. So it was during that time that I did a lot of things from the pledging to the Big Brother program to my improv troupe Like Disco But Not Really to even doing choir and other activities that I never used my time well to focus on studying or being good with classes. I thought that I would be able to pull it out in the end like in high school. That's why most weekends I attended parties and got drunk or hung out with people and did stuff or even ended up going home once in awhile to be with the family. I recall one time going home from a party and ended up bumping into an old high school classmate in which I drank more and even did some chewing tobacco. Later on that night, I hit the Subway since it was open until 4 am and got a sub sandwich. I ate that and right in the middle of the quad ended up throwing up horribly.

I even recall 9/11 since it was my first semester away from being at home. I recall waking up and getting ready for classes when my RA asked if I heard what was happening. That was when I went to his room and saw the TV with all that was going on. I was in shock of all of that and could not believe it. I recall that after all my classes, I was on my computer watching the events unfold on my laptop here. I was glued on there at night with headphones on so that I can listen to everything.

It was there that I did a lot and after my first semester, I ended up failing badly. I got a 1.95 GPA and was placed on probation. I felt guilty about it and thought that by cutting out a few activities and setting a few things back while taking on more hours I would be ok. Well, I kept my bad habits going here. While doing the Big Brother program, I saw the kid a few times and hung out with him but I wasn't there enough to be a true influence and that was bad on my part. It was even there that I began to discover more of me being gay with the discovery of gay porn and paying for subscriptions here. It didn't go well since mom saw the charges and I ended up making it sound like someone did it as a joke. It was a bad thing there. So I worked a bit harder and even thought that having a dry-erase board right by me would help me keep track of deadlines but that wasn't the case. I know that even in that semester I downloaded a ton of music here and it was a great deal since I used Rhapsody to get my tunes.

Well, I tried my best and ended up failing out since I bombed 2 classes here. I felt devastated here to the utmost here since I have never failed in anything in my life like that. I was not sure what to do since I was a bit heavy and depressed. I wanted to take the summer off so that I could figure something out but my mom forced me to go back to school and enrolled me in Triton to take some classes in order to get myself working on bettering myself and be ready for the new semester at UIUC by taking the year at Triton and then petitioning back there.

So I decided to take my mom's advice and go to school for the summer and take a few classes there. I took a full summer's load here by taking Calculus I, Introduction to Programming (since that's what I wanted to do), and Introduction to Computational Mathematics (dealt a lot with logic problems like IF-THEN, AND, OR, and NOT statements). It was during the summer that I began to see myself doing a bit better in the classes and began to work hard making sure to get stuff done since my mom was on my ass making sure I didn't slack off and fall behind in my work. After that summer, I saw that I not only passed all my classes with straight A's but that I was losing the weight a bit since my depression was starting to clear up a bit. I even began to hang out with my friends from high school that I was close with and we were talking about a lot of different things like how I knew I was gay and when it first dawned on me. It was a good time for me and as such began to change a lot on my life here.

It was in the fall semester that things began to change for me here. For the most part, I was driven to school either by my friend Becky or my dad. I was lucky that my classes were done after 1:30pm since my dad would pick me up and take me home so that I could eat a bit before I get on my bike and ride off to my old high school to help out the team as a manager/stats stringer. It was from doing this that my brother and I got a bit closer and it was here that I got pretty close to the whole team. I was there just about every day and at every meet ready to help out and record the times for meets and workouts. I was even lucky to have my tower to my own self since I was able to use Works or Office to make my sheets that I used for the times and everything. From doing this, I got to run and lose more weight plus get in a better mood since it was a great way to cure my depression here.

Of course the end of October came and the season was over, so I needed to find something else to do with my free time. After finding out that Becky joined student government, I joined about a week later and signed up for a few of the committees which was pretty cool. I was enjoying the fun there by hanging out with some of the people there and making new friends with people like Alecia and Jerissa. It was a great deal of fun with them since I got close with them and they were seeing a side of me that I never showed. I even was able to slowly come out to them and use the computers in the Senate office to check out profiles online for dating.

After a few months, I got close to everyone and considered a good chunk of the people to be friends and acquaintances while Jennifer, Alecia, Jerissa, and I got to be very close friends. On the other hand, Becky and I began to drift apart a bit. It was until one meeting for the committee that things really got out of hand here. What happened is that Becky was upset with a decision that the Budget Committee made on a professor's application for the Senate which was late. Becky wanted us to look at it and consider it for vote but we all agreed that since the application was late, we should pass on it and move on. Well, that set off a ton of sparks for her and she left the meeting early for that. With that happening, we were down one person for the votes but pretty much approved the rest of the budgets that were dropped off. That following week, we had a committee meeting with Becky and the Technology Committee in which she was a bit sour from the day before. When the meeting started, Jerissa was sitting in the meeting in which Becky was not happy about that at all. Things were getting pretty heated between the two of them and it was not looking very good. She ended up storming out of the office and we had to cancel the meeting from what happened. Later on that day in an attempt to make my mind change, I heard from Jen that Becky was talking about me being out which was uncool (I now know that I was the one sharing information about that to the Senate and for that Becky, I do apologize for that) and I felt betrayed. It was there that she was not happy with me for staying on their side of everything and as such things were bad.

On the day that we have our usual Senate meeting, Becky called my cell and she gave me an ultimatum between voting on impeaching her and losing our friendship or keeping her in office and dealing with the chaos. I was very upset of it all and felt trapped in a corner here. In the end, I abstained my vote but with the shortage of votes, the impeachment did not go through. At the end of the meeting, Becky gave her letter of resignation and she left Senate. I ended up taking over her chair position and ran the committee pretty well until the end of the year. It was a good time for me here and I felt glad to do something like that.

I would talk about my first boyfriend Robb in this point but I feel that talking about my exes would be a different act in this life story that I'm writing here, which would most likely be the next act since it is a bit important to talk about him and put in some details as to how we met and everything like that here.

So with the end of the spring semester and the end of my year stay at Triton, I felt that Champaign was ready for my comeback. I wanted to return there to work on my degree with a new sense of accomplishment and a sense of pride and dedication to my studies. I felt that with my past somewhat behind me, I was able to go on and work on my degree with no problems whatsoever. So in April, I began to write my petition letter to the College of Engineering pleading with them to take me back and allow me to work on my CS degree there since I have said that I am ready to work hard and do what is needed to be a successful student here. It was in June that I got my letter of acceptance back to Champaign which made me proud and happy. I felt glad to be returning back down there and to experience all that the school I held with pride in my heart here. I ended up telling my new friends about this and they were happy for me that I was doing this yet sad to see me go down there but in the end they knew that U of I was where I wanted to be at and where my heart desired to go. So I hung out with them a few more times in the summer while I did summer school again and it was a great time for me to enjoy my last days with them before Champaign started up in August. I felt ready to take on UIUC again and this time be successful since I learned from my mistakes here.

So thus ends Act 4 here for everyone. I was hoping to make this be a very long entry covering 2001-2004 but then the entry would be humongous. That is why I broke it up into 2 parts for now. Anyways, you will learn in Act 5 all about Robb, my first boyfriend and how we came to meet and the break-up that happened. Act 6 will contain a lot about my second trip to UIUC and the aftermath of that. So stay tuned to all that I write here since the next updates will kinda reveal a lot about why I lost myself in so many ways and took many years to find my old self again or at least something like it.