Well, again, it's been a while, so I figured I would check in with some random summer thoughts.
This summer has been an interesting one as I feel like it has had a lot of trouble actually feeling like summer. I don't know if that is because every time I go to the beach it seems to be overcast and/or windy or because I didn't take enough vacation. That said, a not-quite-summer-feeling-summer is a heckuva lot better than any day that does not happen during the summer.
So what have I been up to? Let's see here...
I've been obsessively reading Chuck Klosterman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Klosterman who is perhaps the best young (relatively speaking) American humor essayist of my generation. Some would call him "low culture" while others will and have called him "America's Most Annoying Writer" but those people are generally either incredibly jealous of his career, crazy, or humorless, or all of the above. If you are into clever humor, seemingly strange metaphors that go nowhere but then miraculously come around only to make perfect sense, and sports...and rock & roll...and heavy metal...or music in general - basically, if you have a personality - you will enjoy Chuck Klosterman's writing. I highly recommend him, but don't start with Fargo Rock City, his first effort, start with this http://www.simonsays.com/content/book.cfm?tab=1&pid=517695. Then go from there.
I have also just recently completed uploading all of my cd's into I-tunes, which was fun. I now have almost a week's worth of music on I-tunes, which feels like a lot but which I will surely be sick of soon. The fun thing about going through the uploading process was that I was able to have time to read liner notes that I either never took the time to read or totally forgot about. Actually, most liner notes are pretty disappointing. The major exception to this tends to be Pearl Jam. Check out Vs. if you need an example.
A few weeks ago I attended one of my best friend's wedding. The wedding was great, not just becuase of the excellent location (it had a stellar view of The Cape Ann Light Station on Thacher Island off of Gloucester, MA...see picture above), but because it was a really small wedding. There were maybe 50 guests, and I knew most of them. One of the great things about the intimacy of the wedding is that you actually got to hang out with old friends, something I rarely get to do any more as life gets in the way very often. One thing about most of my old friends is that a lot of them live really far away, in places like Chicago, Colorado, and California to name a few. So to get everyone together in one spot like that is pretty rare these days, and it made for a really special occasion the likes of which happen only a handful of times. Anyway, that was cool.
So what else happened? I went to the Boston Bruins Rookie Development camp held last week at Wilmington's Ristuccia Arena, or whatever they're calling it these days.
I have a serious love/hate relationship with the Bruins. On one hand I will always love them because they are my team, they are in my blood, and I can never stop caring about them. On the other hand, they have crushed my soul on numerous occasions, including - but certainly not limited to - this past offseason, where they decided to really not do anything noteworthy other than make a couple of questionable trades. Note that I did not say "bad trades," I simply said "questionable." Here is what would not have been questionable; trading Glenn Murray and signing Chris Drury as a free agent. Anyway, I don't want to belabor this point or else I should make this a Bruins blog instead of a UMass Lowell Admissions blog, but I'm sure you get what I'm saying here. Wow that was a tangent. So, the development camp was fun. I stole lots of drills that I can use next year when I'm coaching at Lowell High and I was reasonably impressed with some of the Bruins youngsters, so there is reason for optimism. They keep pulling me back in.
I just took a look at some of our print materials for next year and they are looking 100 times better than they used to look. They are much more current and real than they have been in the past. Just to let you guys know in case you did not already know this, but admissions in general has turned into a huge business. More accurately, the "business" of admissions has given birth to a burgeoning admissions industry complete with consultants, conferences, "publications packages", etc. The long and short of it is that it is simply not a coincidence that many of you will be receiving upwards of 100 pieces of mail from colleges you may or may not have heard of and that some of those things will look so awesome that you will instantly want to go to school at those places. Most of those were done by huge companies who specialize in marketing to your demographic. What makes our stuff kind of cool is that it is more organic. We really are trying to engage our students in the process more and I think it is paying dividends. Granted, we don't have the kinds of resources that those other places do for publications but we give it the old college try, and I think what we come up with is pretty decent stuff this year. I'm proud of it for the most part.
Oh yeah, another thing that happened is that I turned 30. This was traumatic for me, but probably not the way you think it was traumatic for me. It was traumatic because about two years ago - when I was 28 - I started having dreams that I was turning 30. I would wake up in a panic and swear that I was suddenly 30, and I was just not happy with this development in any way. However, one unexpected byproduct of these nightmares is that those recurring dreams forced me to deal with the whole turning 30 thing two years before it actually happened. When it did happen it was almost totally uneventful, except for the fact that everyone around me said it was a big deal, so I had to acknowledge that it was. I guess it is when you think about it. Still, I feel absolutely no different than I did last week at this time.
Oh yeah, by the way, I watched that show on National Geographic. Sadly, I was slightly bored by it, and the UMass Lowell content was not until almost the end of the show. But on the bright side I thought the actual segment involving UML was decent. See below post for details if you have no idea what I'm talking about.
Well, that's about it for now. I'll check in at a later date.
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