Hello everyone. I'm still alive. How are you all doing? Who still stops by regularly?

As busy as I've been of late, I never forget about the place that defined my first few years of high school. My life has changed pretty dramatically since I last popped in here. Here's what I've been up to:

Last time I made a thread like this, I had just turned 21, and was excited to announce that I had switched my career path from lawyer to teacher, and that I had been promoted to a leadership position at my summer camp job. I've since been fired from that job, and I'm dropping out of grad school lol. I know that sounds bleak, but trust me, my life has never been better. Stick around and you'll find out why.

I graduated from Binghamton University in December of 2020 with a Bachelor's Degree in English and Political Science, Magna Cum Laude. The plan was to move back in with my parents and go to Stony Brook University for grad school to get my Master's in English Education (and my teaching certification), but I did not want to start right away. Starting in the Spring felt odd to me, since most people start in the Fall, so I opted to take a semester off and work before starting grad school in Fall 2021. I originally wanted to do the Disney College Program during this semester, but the program was suspended due to COVID, and had not yet been resumed at the time. Instead, I got a substitute teaching job at the school district that my step-mom works at, as well as an online SAT & ACT tutoring job for a company that one of my friends used to work for. I enjoyed subbing quite a bit. It was easy work, and I liked that I could choose to work or not work whenever I felt like it, since it was a per diem job. I didn't like the tutoring job as much. It felt very robotic and scripted, and the fact that it was done over Zoom felt unnatural to me. The hourly pay was pretty good, but I was only given eight to twelve hours per week, so I wasn't making much money from it either. I did end up helping raise one student's SAT score a whopping 320 points across two months of tutoring, though, and I will always be extremely proud of that.

Then came the summer of 2021. I'm getting ahead of myself, though, because before I explain what I did during the summer of 2021, I first need to explain what happened in November 2020. As I mentioned in my last update post (over 2 years ago), I was the Editor-in-Chief of Binghamton Review. I held that title for the final three semesters of my undergraduate career, and I am incredibly proud of the content we were able to produce under my leadership. Binghamton Review was involved in a few controversies during my time—as is to be expected for a paper that allows writers to write pretty much whatever they want—and the final one of my tenure came during the very last issue I published. On the fourth page of every issue, we have a "Press Watch" section, where we respond to articles published in other campus papers, namely the mainstream newspaper Pipe Dream. Our responses are usually a mix of sarcasm and sincerity, of humor and legitimate criticism. Press Watch is done on production night, and during my tenure I delegated it to the rest of my team, as I focused on editing articles and putting the issue together in InDesign. On this particular night, the Managing Editor (who also happened to be my brother) and Copy Desk Chief (who we'll call Harry) were working on it. My brother was reading and responding to an opinion piece in Pipe Dream about the benefits of TikTok, a social media platform that he just so happens to despise. To support her claim that TikTok exposes people to different cultures, the author of the article made a remark about the lack of diversity in her upbringing, mentioning how she went to a Jewish school, Jewish youth group, and Jewish camps. Upon reading this, my brother pointed out the unfortunate and unintentional double entendre of the phrase "Jewish camps." Harry, who is Jewish himself, suggested that we respond by asking "Did those Jewish camps help with your concentration?" A reference to concentration camps, of course, pointing out the unintended connotation of the way that the author chose to word her sentence. He asked my permission to publish it. Since it was glaringly obvious to me that the point of the joke was about word choice (and not people dying in the Holocaust), and since a Jewish person had wrote the joke and thought it was inoffensive, I did not object. It was such a non-issue to me that I completely forgot that we had even published it—until people starting flipping out on the internet a week or two later. Now, I was no stranger to people getting mad about what we publish. Normally I ignore it, but this time I felt a need to stand up for my staff member. I made a quick response on an Instagram post stating that the joke was about word choice, that the writer himself is Jewish, and that I would not be apologizing. Big mistake. People didn't even care about the joke anymore; they were infuriated that I refused to back down and apologize. And since I had made the comment from my personal Instagram account, they now had a name to go after. The TL;DR version is that I got canceled. People were spreading my name all over the internet, in various groups and social media platforms, without even bothering to get the basic facts right. Next thing I knew, I apparently wrote the joke myself, and I apparently called some random elderly man that I've never seen before all sorts of insults in the past, and I apparently harassed people on a regular basis. I received a ton of fun DMs, including, but not limited to, death threats, threats of bodily harm, people telling me to kill myself, calling me an anti-Semite (and just about every insult you can think of), and my favorite, "Ur never getting a job. Like never. I'm gonna make it my job. To make sure u don't get a job. Done for. 0. Loser. Hope u get 0 p*ssy this year. And if I see u I'll slap u if you look my way." People also took to change.org, and there are at least two petitions on there that mention me by name. One person tried to get me expelled from Binghamton by reporting me to Student Conduct. (Nothing ever came of that, of course, because I never actually did anything wrong). And, if that wasn't enough, people looked me up on LinkedIn, found out where I worked, and bombarded my boss with emails demanding that I be fired, and threatening him and his business if he refuses to terminate my employment. I wasn't the least bit concerned about it, because I had been working there for five years, I had given 110% to a job that paid me pennies, and I was the heart of the camp. All of the campers loved me, and every single on of them knew my name, even though I had never had most of them in my group. I was the most valuable employee he had. And then I realized that loyalty doesn't exist, and neither does his backbone. Oh well.

I made the move to a different summer camp, and immediately realized how incompetent my former boss was. The way they did things at my new camp was exactly how I had been telling him to do things for years. They understood that camp was about having fun, not just getting through the day. (Side note that I find absolutely hilarious: Ironically, the director of my new camp is Jewish, as are at least 50% of the campers.) I joined their travel program, which was much more impressive than the program at my old camp. Every week but the first one had an overnight trip in it—either a three-day or five-day trip. It was an insane summer because our travel supervisor was completely incompetent, but I ended up getting him fired when I told my boss about everything that had happened, and I am currently half-way through a much less stressful second summer of travel camp.

I ended up quitting the tutoring job, but I kept subbing as I started my first semester of grad school at Stony Brook in Fall 2021. As soon as I started, I realized how much I hated college. I got through it (with a 4.0), but I had no desire to be there. I also started to question if I actually wanted to teach. I love working with kids, but the New York State standards for lesson plans are insane. Did I really want to spend that much time designing 180 lessons that fit the mold that some government official decided on? A few months into the semester I got an email from Disney. The college program was back. You know what? F*ck it. I'm going.

I could easily write tens of thousands of words about my Disney College Program experience (in fact, I already have) but for your sanity I'll try to keep it brief. The program works like this: They ask you the earliest date you can get there and the latest date you can stay until. Then they assign you an arrival and departure date based on your availability and their needs. Disney will assign a role to you. They can put you wherever they see fit—attractions, food service, merchandise, custodial, you name it. You could work at one of the four parks, but you could also end up at a resort, water park, Disney Springs, etc. You live at Flamingo Crossings Village in an apartment with 3 other people. There are three room styles, you can list preferences but you get what you get and you don't get upset. Pay is $14/hr, and rent it automatically taken from your weekly paycheck. I got one of the more glamorous jobs that people tend to have in mind when they apply—attractions cast member at Pirates of the Caribbean. I was also later trained to work crowd control for the nightly firework shows. It was a pretty cool experience. For a more detailed breakdown of the program, click here.

Of course my experience was much more than just the work that I did. My time in Florida was defined much more by the people that I met. The first thing that one of my roommates (who had already been living there for a while) said to me on move-in day was that the male-to-female ratio at Flamingo Crossings is insane, and that I will quickly become a hot commodity because straight guys do not exist there. He wasn't wrong. I told myself that I would not get into a relationship while I was down there, though. It just didn't make sense. I was going back to New York to finish grad school after my program ended, so there is no way that a relationship would work out. Mess around, sure. But no feelings allowed

Two days later I fell in love with the first girl that I met.

The end.

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Alright fine, I'll tell the story. Before arriving in Florida, I had been added to a group chat with a bunch of other people that had the same arrival date as I did. Move-in was on a Monday, and there was a Welcome Event the following Wednesday for everyone that had moved in that week. A bunch of us in the group chat met up at the event, with one extra non-group chat person joining us. A cute, quiet, blonde girl named Mackenzie had started a conversation with someone from our group chat while in line for pizza, and decided to tag along, since she didn't know anyone. After realizing that the event was lame I suggested that we go somewhere else instead, and one of our new friends offered up his apartment. Ten or so of us hung out there for a few hours, including Mackenzie. I was drunk, no one else drank anything. You can imagine how that went. The next night I had people over to my apartment. A few people had one or two drinks. I blacked out and had to piece together what happened over the next few days. Everyone left after a few hours, except for Mackenzie and one guy. They both stayed until 5 AM. (I would later come to learn that both of them wanted to spend the night in my bed, but that is a tangent that I don't have time to go on.) Apparently I got really deep and emotional, cried multiple times, and completely overshared. I said things that I don't like telling people at all, much less people I met the day before. I had now hung out with Mackenzie twice, and both times I got drunk and embarrassed myself. One of the few things I did remember from that night was that I really liked her, though I couldn't remember much of the interactions that I had that made me feel that way. A few days later a bunch of us planned to go to Hollywood Studios together. Only Mackenzie and I showed up. We spent the whole day together. It was amazing. So amazing, in fact, that I retracted my "no relationship" rule. And it has absolutely been worth it. She is quite literally perfect. I dropped out of grad school, and a month from now I will be moving to western Pennsylvania, where she lives, and we will be getting an apartment together. I don't know what I'll do for work yet, but I'll figure it out.

And that's about it. What's going on with you guys? If any of my old friends still stop by here I'd love to hear what you all are up to as well!

tgags123 : I was wondering were you had gone because I had not seen you on here. I have recently returned to this site. I had a lot medical issues going on. But I have been back on here this summer on a semi-regular basis.

Cancel culture has gotten ridiculous at times. Even if people do not have a problem with your statement, jokes, politics, etc you can still get canceled. I have read about people getting canceled for ridiculous things.

Glad you are doing good though.

It's good to see an update, I saw all that stuff about the Binghampton Review back when it was happening, kinda funny people got so twisted about it. Glad nothing came of such...complaints.

I'm glad you've been doing well, finally got some b****es, and finally getting that adult life going. Big things happening, good luck with your job search and if you ever need anything, feel free to reach out.

Barathemos : Singular b****, but "one good girl is worth a thousand b****es" - Kanye West.

Thanks man. I appreciate you. Hope all is well.