My brother is gay. Though he hadn’t publicly stated so until just a few years ago, there have been strong suggestions his whole life. Much of his life and his social experience were more or less defined by his homosexuality and the way other people treated him. Being his brother, this has also carried a strong influence in me. I have learned what I regard as my most valuable life lessons from the experiences my brother had and the...

’ve read one book by a Yale professor, On Writing Well by William Zinsser. Most of what I learned though was not about writing. Two of his theses were “cut the fluff” and “writing is hard”, both very relevant to life. He helped me to focus my day to what I really want to accomplish and do, and his description of the falsity of “good writing just flows” changed the way I approach work.

I am on what my history teacher calls the “three-day-a-week accelerated program” in that I’m usually at school three times a week. Inevitably, my friends want to know why I’m out of school for days at a time; this is where my frustration begins. There are times when I simply say, “CASC stuff.” To which some people reply, “the thing with the pirate game and the posters?” while others offer a, “that’s the Senate…marketing…thing, right?”...