My Story

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June 12, 2005*

The house in Bochum where I spent nearly five years of my life

I was born in Bochum, Germany on November 28, 1983, at 2:45 a.m. (11/27/83 8:45 p.m. Syracuse time). I grew up in a nice big house in this city. My dad worked at the University of Bochum as a chemistry professor and my mom also taught in this area, the “Rhein-Ruhr Area”, and wrote and published many books. I attended Kindergarten there during the 1987-1988 school year.

The Kindergarten in Bochum which I attended during the 1987-1988 school year

In April of 1988 my dad began working at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Binghamton in Vestal, NY. My mom and I followed in August of that same year. We first lived in the Evergreen Apartments, now behind Starbucks on the Vestal Parkway, while my parents were finalizing the purchase of our house at 416 Denal Way.

Vestal, NY

Then there’s the story of how I would have been a member of the Class of 2001… My parents enrolled me in Kindergarten at African Road Elementary School that fall. I was the youngest in my class, barely making the December 1 cutoff date for turning five. There was also one other slight problem: I couldn’t speak English! I had just learned my first few words on the Pan Am flight over from Germany!

I barely remember not being able to speak English though. I picked up the entire language (at least at the level of a five year old) within three months. But I’ll admit I was also a bit of a brat. The teacher didn’t like me too much because I bit a kid or two and was just really stubborn.

So that’s how I “failed” Kindergarten! My parents then enrolled me in pre-school at SUNY Binghamton, where they both now worked. At the time it was quite a hilarious operation. It was in the basement of a dormitory and our cafeteria and playground were in the basement of another dormitory! My most memorable experience that year was starting a fire when I plugged in a broken radio that our teachers had allowed us to cut wires on. Why they gave us an open, broken, radio to play with is beyond me!

Well I successfully finished pre-school and had now earned another attempt at Kindergarten, this time at the SUNY one though. It was also in a dormitory building! I graduated from Kindergarten in June 1990 (yes, we had a ceremony) and was finally allowed to move onto first grade.

Kindergarten is as high as SUNY child-education goes, so I went back to African Road Elementary. I was quite the adventurous type and I’d often walk through the attached Junior High on my way back from bringing the class’s lunch orders to the cafeteria. Eventually I got caught though by one of our lunch aids who was scared half-to-death that I would get trampled by middle school students, which is quite understandable!

Elementary went by year by year, and I graduated from it after fifth grade in June 1995. That fall I experienced middle school for only a week before my parents and I went to Mühlheim an der Ruhr, Germany (down the road from my hometown Bochum) for four months for my dad’s sabbatical at an institute there.

I attended Karl-Ziegler-Gymnasium, a school in the heart of downtown Mühlheim. It was really strange for me since it was first time since 1987 that I attended a German school.

When I got back to Vestal Middle School I felt out of place again. Let me tell you, kids change more in their first few months of middle school then they probably do in such a short period of time ever again. One word… Hormones! Anyway, I had to readjust myself to a group of kids I hadn’t even really had the opportunity to meet yet in the short week that I had been there in the fall. It was the last year that we had a playground block and I saw no point in it and would sit on a bench and read. I remember all the attractive girls in my “team” (group of homerooms) got a kick out of being all over me (obviously as a joke) while I sat there.

Seventh grade was the last full school year I spent in Vestal. It was pretty uneventful.

Eighth grade was a whole new beginning in a sense, because I started going to Vienna, Austria half a year, every year. Eighth grade was a bit different, because I went to an Austrian school. This is where I learned that I can speak, write, and read English, but don’t know how it works. All the English teacher would ask would be "what is the past participle of ‘moving’ " or something. I still got an A+ in that class though. I finished back in Vestal, and did pretty well. Ninth and tenth grade I continued to do the fifty/fifty thing but this time using the American International School in Vienna.

My junior year at this very American school changed this pattern. I was finally elected class president, which I had also tried unsuccessfully the year before. But after losing I started a yearlong campaign, which eventually got me elected. Anyway, as class president you can't exactly leave after a semester, so I stayed. But I really wanted to since I had made many good friends, was interested in a girl, and I felt very accepted. The thing I really liked about that school was that everyone was accepted for who they were (yes it is possible!). Looking back, I now I wish I had stayed at this school a full four years.

Senior year went much like the junior year, but much faster. Before I knew it, I graduated. I remember walking my dog the night before graduation and wondering in disbelief where senior year had gone. It had seemed like only yesterday (and still does) that it was the first day of school of that year, August 22. That year I did not get reelected as class president, but found a loophole in the student council constitution that states that post-graduates can elect one non-voting member to student council. The two postgraduates were fine with me representing them, and so I spent another year representing students, even if it was just two instead of over fifty!

My 18th Birthday Party

The one thing that I did not enjoy about AIS Vienna was that students were pressured into taking Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) classes. Many subjects such as economic were not offered on a standard level. In fact, in order to take a non-IB history class my senior year I had to sit in a tenth-grade-level class as the sole senior. IB and I were never a great fit, and this drove my GPA down immensely. My GPA was so low that I got rejected to every college I applied to except Hunter College. With appeals I was finally accepted to two more colleges, SUNY Potsdam and Utica College of Syracuse University. My goal had been to go to Syracuse University, but I was rejected there despite two long appeal processes.

Senior Prom

Thus I ended up attending Utica College of Syracuse University, a small 2,200-student former satellite college of Syracuse University that still grants the “prestigious” Syracuse University baccalaureate degrees. My goal of course was to show Syracuse University admissions officials that they had made a horrible mistake and that I was indeed SU-worthy. I applied to transfer after two semesters in Utica and was finally accepted to Syracuse University.

During my junior year of college I lived in the basement of this building in Syracuse. Now I'm moving up to the first floor.
(Copyright Campus Hill Apartments)

In the second semester of studying at SU I declared my majors as being international relations and German. I'm in my last year of college and visit Vienna every opportunity I get, although I enjoy living in Syracuse as well.

 

*Original version: April 15, 2000. Updated June 9, 2000 and June 29, 2002. Completely Rewritten June 11, 2004 using some of the original content. Updated again on March 17 and June 12, 2005.