LEAD STORY   The Graduates Five High School Seniors Tell It Like It Is. BY NIGEL JAQUISS njaquiss@wweek.com

Lincoln is the city's oldest high school. It was founded in 1869. The current building at 1600 SW Salmon St. was built in 1952.   Students from throughout the city can attend Lincoln if they are accepted into either the International Studies Center magnet program or the International Baccalaureate Program.   Humorist Matt Groening, poet Gary Snyder, painter Mark Rothko and professional golfer Peter Jacobsen are among Lincoln's prominent alumni.

Read a poem by Carly Luzader about Lincoln High School, and the speech Paul Susi gave in Salem last week. Kids are news. Whatever the story--whether it's efforts to crack down on cruising downtown, the battle over education funding in Salem or the national circus surrounding school shootings--young faces tend to dominate the media. Young voices do not. We know what experts think of kids, what lawmakers think of kids and what reporters think of kids. But as the last high-school graduating class of the century collects its diplomas, we don't know what kids themselves think. With the goal of finding out, we went to Lincoln High School. The city's most academically oriented and second-most affluent high school is hardly typical. We chose Lincoln for a simple reason: It's close to WW's office. For background, we spoke to teachers, administrators and parents, but their words won't appear here. This is a story about students--told completely in students' words--taken from a series of interviews conducted during the last month of school. The voices you'll hear in the following pages may sound choppy and may wander. That's how kids talk--not in carefully sculpted sound bites. After speaking with dozens of students, we chose to present five. They aren't necessarily the five the administration might have wanted us to present, nor are they necessarily representative of any group, clique or minority. We chose them not because they're typical but because they had something to say about what it's really like to be in high school. Their words have been edited for clarity and brevity.

Lincoln's Constitution Team, which prepares and presents arguments based on constitutional issues, has finished first in the nation three times in the past 12 years. This year's team, which included Paul Susi, finished fourth.   In 1990, 42 percent of Lincoln students came from eastside neighborhoods. By 1997, only 25 percent did.   Minority enrollment at Lincoln is on a steady decline, sliding from 24 percent in 1981 to just below 15 percent in 1998.   In 1997, Oregon's two Presidential Scholars graduated from Lincoln. Both students coming from the same school was thought to be a first for the state and the nation.

Paul Susi 1300 on the SAT, Constitution Team, voted outstanding drama student, organizer of Lincoln's Arts Assembly. Lives in Gresham with his mother, rides his bike 14 miles to Lincoln twice a week. Did not apply to any colleges. Part of me wants to be a fireman when I grow up, or watch forest fires like Jack Kerouac. Part of me wants to be a sculptor or a poet. I really don't know what I'll do. I'm adrift. I know it probably sounds crazy, but I decided this year not to accept any grade higher than a C, even if the teacher says I deserve an A. I think for the most part teachers have understood my misgivings because, I suspect, they share them. I viewed my time at Lincoln as for learning, not for college applications or résumé-building. In my opinion, grades have encumbered my peers to the point where they have become the major objective instead of learning. At Lincoln, a number of students can't take advanced science classes next year because there isn't enough space. A scary solution to this problem is that a biology teacher offered to teach an evening course in her own free time. That sends the wrong message to Salem--the more you cut, the more we'll find volunteers, so we really didn't need the resources in the first place. We're being forced to produce on an extracurricular basis what we should get inside the school. This year, I've been to Salem three times with the Coalition for School Funding Now! and spoken to the Portland School Board about the need to preserve the arts in education. The response has been really disheartening and disillusioning. No one listens. The state government has been horribly disrespectful to students. They're teaching us horrible lessons. [Read a copy of the speech Susi gave in Salem last week.] I've also decided not to apply to colleges next year. I'm not going to go to college just because all my peers are going, and I'm not going to go to college just because society tells me it's the proper thing to do. If I go, it will be because I have a clear objective to accomplish and I have something that I want to learn. I sometimes wonder whether I'm trying to rationalize my own laziness. If so, it's an incredibly elaborate rationalization. As far as I'm concerned, the system as a whole is not right, and therefore I have to hold myself back from applying myself completely to it. I did join the Constitution Team this year because I wanted to demonstrate that I'm pursuing learning and not just a reputation of being a rebel. My home situation is also not exactly conducive to pushing myself for grades. My mother had a stroke in 1994, and my parents divorced soon after. I've tried to stay on civil terms with both of them, primarily because my mother's condition is such that she can cook but she can't drive, so from time to time I have to balance her checkbook, which is not an easy thing to do, and sometimes I need money from my father. I need to stay on good terms with him in order to help my mother. Earlier this year, my father issued an ultimatum: I could either live by his rules--and by that he meant get good grades--or get out of his house. I opted for the latter. A classmate took me in for a while, but I'm uncomfortable imposing on her family. I don't know where I'm going to live. Four nights in the past two weeks I've stayed at Coffee Time on Northwest 21st Avenue because it's open 24 hours. I'm on my bike, so it's not very appealing to go back to my mother's in Gresham, and because of my differences with my father, I feel I can't stay at his place. Books have sort of filled the vacuum in my family life. Especially after my mother's stroke, I found myself turning more to libraries and bookstores instead of going home. There's no Obi-Wan Kenobi in my life, but from time to time I do meet a Yoda. Mr. Sweeney [a social-studies teacher at Lincoln] really inspired me; so did certain priests when I was younger. I was an altar boy at St. Mary's Cathedral for seven years, and the priests there were very bright and solid people, exemplary in their moderation and quiet faith. I still have a profound respect for Catholicism, but I don't consider myself a practicing Catholic. I'm intrigued and fascinated by it because of its poetry, because of its history, and the actor in me is attracted by its theatrics. At the same time, the politics and the dogma don't sit well with me. Yet I find it hard to believe that an institution that could produce St. Francis of Assisi, Augustine, all these bright lights of history...I can't believe the whole thing is wrong. Catholicism is part of my culture or, more properly, part of my parents'. They're from the Philippines. When I was little, they didn't want to teach me any of the Filipino dialects because they were afraid I'd confuse them with English or alienate my peers, so consequently I was raised completely ignorant of my heritage. I have this perspective of having the same color and name but not being able to connect with my relatives. Visiting the Philippines last summer was an incredible anthropological experience. Because of the strong dollar, my father and I were able to give my relatives money. They would take it and fold it up very neatly until it could be hidden in the fifth pocket of their jeans. That's why their money has this texture that our money doesn't have; it's so much more supple and so much richer. Money to them has so much more implicit value than it does to us. I've never felt racism in the classic sense of not being allowed to take part in things but rather in the affirmative-action sense. When I first came to Lincoln, my counselor was encouraging me to do all these activities because I was ethnic and it would look good in terms of the club photos. She was very pragmatic about it. At first, I was puzzled, but I came to understand that it was part of an ongoing Lincoln psychology.

Carly Luzader 3.3 GPA. Skateboarder. Eastsider. Will go to Oregon State University to study veterinary science. When I came to Lincoln, I didn't really have my own opinions. Everything that anyone said I wanted to be a part of--I wanted to be cool. And at first I kind of sunk in a little bit into the whole scene there. I tried to portray myself as a rich kid, tried to wear the new Levi's jeans, get all my clothes at Meier & Frank. I ran track just so I could be with my friends. I wasn't interested in track at all, but they thought it was kind of cool, so I thought it was cool, too--at first. Actually, I was supposed to go Jefferson. There's only been one year in my life when I've attended the school I was supposed to. In middle school, I used my aunt's address to go to Fernwood instead of Whitaker. In high school, I used my mom's address on Skyline to go to Lincoln, even though she hasn't lived there for three years. It's kind of made me feel out of place because until high school none of my neighbors went to the same schools as me. I just thought it would be so cool to live on the same block as someone who went to your school, you know? I don't belong to a group, really. I have one or two good friends at Lincoln I talk to every day, but other than that there's not anybody I talk to every day other than my teachers. I started riding a skateboard because I wanted to be an individual. You see groups, and it's like they're all one person. You see them making decisions together. I wanted to be someone who could make my own decisions, who could go out by myself in the world and be OK with that. Skateboarding, I think, was a part of me trying to find something to do, like, with myself. I would sit there by myself at break, at lunch. There are people who do that, but I'm a very social person. I'll talk to anyone. I mean, I'm nice to everyone I can be nice to unless they have a problem with me. There are only about 10 skateboarders at Lincoln. I'm the only girl. It's hard to say how I fit in. Some of them accept me, but a lot of them think I'm so different because most of the girls they know are preppies who wear long dresses and short skirts, or those little shirts. I'd come to school with bruises all over my legs, I'd come to school with a huge black eye from falling on my head, and they thought, they still think, that I'm different. I don't hang out with the other skater kids. They're all freshmen and sophomores anyway. I get weird looks from just walking around by myself, but it's worth it to me. There are a lot of spoiled kids at Lincoln. They think that this planet was set here for them and totally them. Everything has to be for them, and everything has to be given to them. They'll just walk down the halls and throw things on the ground. Lincoln's extremely dirty. I've been to probably all the other high schools, and we have the dirtiest school. It's because the majority of people don't care. A lot of the students don't have respect for the teachers, and they don't have respect for other students. Maybe they have maids at their houses that walk behind them and clean up after them. I don't know. I know that other students don't like me. And that's a hard thing to know--that other students are talking about you, that they don't like you, that they stare at you. You see them stare at you. I think it's because I'm not one of them. I have my own opinions, and I state them. I'm not quiet about it, and I think that they don't like that. They're not used to that. How come it's right for them to state their opinion but not for someone who has a different opinion? One of the things I feel strongly about is animal rights. They think that it's OK to kill animals, and that's their choice--I'm not putting them down. But in every class, I've gotten in arguments with people about animal rights and eating meat. I think arguing's a healthy thing to do, but they don't like it. There have been times when I've been really depressed. This winter I ran away from home for five weeks because I couldn't handle it. I couldn't stand being at school. I stayed with people I got to know from the skate parks. They were all pushing me to finish high school and go to college, so it was actually a good idea to go there. I realized how important an education was and how important my family was. I wasn't with my parents at Christmas for the first time in my life, and that was tough because I look up to my father more than any other person; he's pretty much who I want to make happy. During high school I have probably done a lot of everything you can think of, except heroin. I've done speed. I've done crank. I drank more than I can fathom, more than I can think about. For a while, I was drinking every day. When the night came, the dark, I would sneak out of my house and not come home until late, drunk. Fortunately, I'm an extremely non-addictive person. I think I was bored, and when I drank, I felt happier. With every drug that I did, except for pot, I was really happy. But then when I did run away, I realized that's not what I needed. And since I came back home, I haven't done any drinking or drugs. Things are better now. That's why my grades have been getting higher. Last month, I wrote this poem in my English class. It's addressed to Lincoln High School, and it's about the environment and students at Lincoln. I'm trying to make them realize who they are because I don't think they know. They need to realize that we're all the same human race and that everybody's equal and that they can't go on living on their parents' money. [Read a copy of the poem.] My teacher asked me to read the poem in the class. I was really shaky while I was reading it, and the room got completely silent. After I finished, everyone stood up and clapped, which they've never done for anyone before. A lot of the preppies didn't really say anything, but there's a couple girls that are kind of in the lesbian drama group, and they were just like, 'That's so good.'

Of 292 classes taught at Lincoln this past semester, 26 had more than 35 students in them and 82 had more than 30, according to district officials.   In 1996, Lincoln lost funding for the International Studies Center ($96,000), International Baccalaureate ($155,000) and Positive Alternative to School Suspension ($33,000) programs.   In 1996, Latin and the entire music program were eliminated at Lincoln.

Galway O'Mahony National Merit Scholar, No. 1-ranked student in the class, 1530 on the SAT, active in student government, co-founder of the International Pastry Club. Attended West Sylvan Middle School, now living on the east side. Will attend Harvey Mudd College. My parents got divorced when I was very young, so it seems natural that they're not together. Sometimes it seems like everyone's parents are divorced. When someone tells me their parents aren't divorced, I'm surprised. I've been on my own since March of my sophomore year. Me and my mom didn't get along for several years, and it sort of built up to the point where I didn't want to live at her house and she didn't want me living there. My dad lives in California, so I've lived with my brother for the past year or two. He's 21. Being on my own has given me much more respect for adults and much more respect for what teachers are trying to do and just a better understanding of what your parents really provide. It's forced me to grow up sort of early and take responsibility for myself. Even when I lived with my mom, it wasn't like she was saying, 'Go do your homework.' It's something I chose to do. I was driven to get the best grades I could because of how they're used. I mean, they are the measuring factor at this point. I know I can't be the best at everything, but I want to try, and I won't be happy unless I know I'm doing as well as I can. I never felt like I was above average until the teacher taught us how to read in first or second grade. At that point it wasn't like I was smarter than other people. I just really enjoyed reading, and I started reading a lot right away--road signs, cereal boxes, anything. I think reading has been the key to my academic success. It helps you develop your understanding of math and science and all sorts of things. At the same time, I don't want to be known only as the No. 1 student in my class. That doesn't really matter to me when people congratulate me or whatever. I'd rather be known for other things. I'd rather have people know something about me that doesn't reflect my grades, something that actually reflects my personality. For instance, I'm very opinionated. I have serious problems with the administration at Lincoln. I think I've been one of the more outspoken people about what they're doing wrong--everything from forcing teachers to change their grading policies to expelling students without due process. There was a friend of mine who didn't really go to school very much. Finally, he started coming back to school, and then one day, probably about a month ago, the administration called him in and said that they had dropped him; he couldn't come to school any more. I thought that was completely inappropriate, so I got up in front of 800 people in the school auditorium and said the administration was not following its own rules. After the show, the principal told me that they had suspended my friend indefinitely rather than expelling him. But that's contrary to their policies--10 or 15 times in their handbook they state that a suspension is a maximum of 10 days and anything more than that requires an expulsion hearing in front of school district personnel with parents present. I wrote a letter to The Cardinal Times, our school paper, outlining my position, but the administration wouldn't let them publish it. They just swept it under the rug. For the most part at Lincoln, it's students and teachers vs. the administration, and I think a lot of teachers feel that way, too. There's a lot of pressure put on the teachers, and the administration doesn't really do anything to help. I can't really speak for my teachers, but just looking at them and what they have to deal with--they're putting in way too much time and don't really have enough time to deal with individual students. Overall, it's not encouraging for us. I don't think we look at the teachers and say, 'God, in the future I would really like to be a teacher.' Besides being outspoken, I know I have a reputation as a stoner, someone who smokes pot a lot. I don't really mind that at all. I feel like pot isn't a drug; it's a thing that brings me to a higher consciousness. Pot isn't something that I do to get messed up or drown my pain; I do it to escalate my thinking and increase my awareness. About half the time, I'll do homework high, but going to school high is something I try and stay away from because I feel it's the next step to not going to school at all. I think a lot of people buy into this national anti-drug campaign, and they think smoking pot is going to turn me into a crack-head. I don't agree, and I've talked to teachers and students about it. People who're opposed to pot in the first place are probably going to look at me and say, 'He could be doing better.' Maybe I could, but do I want to do better? No. I'm doing as well as I want to do, and I think I have a good balance between being successful in my studies and being happy at the same time. Everyone could do better, whether they do drugs or not, but it makes me think of Japanese culture, where some people work themselves to death. Is their way better just because they may be more successful? When I think about the future, I have fears--not for myself, because I know I can get by no matter what, but there're things that go on that do worry me. I'm just bewildered by the government policies that allow deforestation and global warming and overpopulation. It almost seems that the people making decisions are stupid. It's a choice between having a planet we can live on or having a little bit of extra money now; the direction we're heading seems kind of ridiculous to me. I think there have been numerous signals for years that the country's youth are becoming estranged from the rest of society. Could what happened at Columbine happen at Lincoln? I don't think you can rule anything out. I bet if you asked any kid at Thurston or Columbine or any of the other schools that have had shootings if they thought something like that could happen at their school, they would say no. But I do think the environment at Lincoln is not one in which something like that would be likely to happen. Ninety-nine percent of the school gets along pretty well and respects each other. The only instance I can think of in which someone is consistently and repeatedly harassed is this one guy who is a convicted sex offender. But, of course, it only takes one person to start shooting.

Rebecca Gundle 3.9 GPA, 1360 SAT, Outdoor School participant, swim team, Community Service Club. Eastsider. Will attend Colorado College. I guess I consider myself a feminist. Lincoln doesn't have an outrageous problem with gender issues, but they're always just below the surface. A lot of girls at Lincoln don't have the confidence to stand up to guys who may be making fun of them. They just kind of laugh it off. Guys are pretty chauvinistic when it comes to dating. They further lots of stereotypes about 'getting it on' and girls only being good for one thing. It's just kind of typical male humor, I guess. Girls talk candidly about guys and sex probably as much as guys talk about us. We're just not as loud. Going out at Lincoln doesn't necessarily mean sex. It's surprising, though. I found out this year that a lot more people are having sex than I ever thought--probably half the people in my class. But then again, I could be wrong. That's just my estimate. There's a really big problem with eating disorders at Lincoln. Even if it's not full-blown anorexia or bulimia, many, many girls are obsessed with food and their weight. I know girls who don't eat at lunch or just eat carrot sticks or deliberately eat in front of people because they know people think they're not eating. Recently, I was talking to a friend of mine who graduated last year. She works at Emanuel Hospital as a receptionist in the emergency room, and she was saying how she hadn't really noticed it at Lincoln, but now in the ER she sees all these girls being hospitalized for eating disorders--12-year-old girls, even a few boys. I don't think the eating disorders are driven by only a desire to be attractive; sometimes it's a matter of control. Society gives us the image that thin is beautiful, but more and more I believe it is a manifestation of other problems. People who don't feel they have any other control over their lives can control what they eat and how they look. I've got this friend who I think has a fairly serious eating disorder. She started cooking for her family so she can control what she eats. She hasn't lost that much weight, but she's obsessive; she hasn't eaten butter in a year. There's kind of a dichotomy when it come to girls and academics. I know plenty of girls who are into being smart and learning a lot. But in my current-issues class, for instance, I'm one of the only girls who talks. For a lot of girls, it's not cool to share your opinion because you're really putting yourself out there. There's this girl--we were best friends in fourth grade, then we didn't hang out for a while. She's the daughter of these hippie parents and grew up with good values. At Lincoln, we were really tight freshman and sophomore years, and then all of a sudden she just wanted to hang out with the cool rich kids. I wasn't exciting enough for her or something. Basically, I just got ditched. Now we're not friends at all. She tans all the time, wears huge makeup, dresses really scandalously and drinks every weekend. She became part of the popular crowd. It's funny because they consider themselves popular but a lot of people don't like them. A lot of them are cheerleaders or football players. They wear a lot of makeup, dress in brand names, that sort of thing. There's this other big crowd that revolves more around academics. It's still sort of a popularity thing, but it's a more diverse clique, more about what music you listen to and whether you're serious about school. I guess people call them the IB (International Baccalaureate) jocks. For the most part, everybody does well academically at Lincoln, and everybody's obsessed by grades. When I got a 1360 on the SAT, I thought that was a really good score. Then I started talking to people, and it seemed just average. There're so many smart people, it's hard to stand out and distinguish yourself, which I always used to do. It's hard to imagine how Lincoln would have been before the funding cuts because that's all I've ever experienced. But despite things like having 83 kids in my humanities class, I've gotten a lot out of it. Funding cuts have made it harder on teachers and on those kids who tend to slip through the cracks. Overall, the cuts haven't made a huge difference to me, but I think it's going to get worse. We got out just in time, I guess. If I could change one thing about Lincoln, it would be to make it more diverse. I just went to Jefferson for the first time a few weeks ago for an African dance program. For the few hours I was there, I wished I'd gone to Jefferson. It was so much more lively and energetic, a whole different culture. I guess Lincoln has a little political diversity, but for the most part it's really homogeneous. I don't see how anybody can call it diverse. The kind of kids Lincoln attracts from other neighborhoods end up being a lot of smart white kids from the east side. I got a really good academic education at Lincoln, but there's something to be said for diversity, and that's what Lincoln lacks. Next year, I'm going to travel, hopefully in Europe, West Africa and Central America. Last summer, I spent two months building latrines in Oaxaca, Mexico. I like traveling, and I wanted a way into a community and to get to know people at a human level and not just as a tourist. Two other girls and I lived with a family there. It was a very positive experience because it made me think a lot about what development means to the third world. I saw that trying to impose our version of hygiene or having to change a culture isn't necessarily a good thing. It made me question what's so great about development and whether our way of living is necessarily the best.

Lincoln's International Baccalaureate (IB) program graduates about 25 seniors annually. In their junior and senior years, IB students take honors-level classes in English, math, physics, chemistry, history, anthropology and foreign languages.   Seventy-four percent of Lincoln's Class of '98 planned to attend four-year colleges or universities. The district average was 43 percent.

Alex Iliinsky 3.0 GPA, 1280 SAT, wrestling team. Westsider. Did not apply to any colleges. At the beginning of this year, I did a senior prank. We took an empty keg and hooked it onto the school's flagpole and hauled it up. They didn't really have anything concrete to suspend me on, but they gave a referral for promoting the possession of alcohol paraphernalia. That's about the same as wearing a beer shirt, and people don't get referrals for that. Basically, they wanted to suspend me no matter what happened. I was like, 'Well, on what grounds are you suspending me for?' And they were like, 'Um, disruptive behavior.' And I was like, 'Disruptive behavior, at 12 o'clock at night? Who am I disrupting with that behavior?' And the vice-principal says, 'Kids came in for their classes and they saw this, and it probably had an influence or it was disruptive to the learning atmosphere.' And I was like, 'You told me earlier, the janitor told me earlier, that they had taken it off before school even started, at 6 in the morning.' It was the first thing that they did. He ignored me, and so I got suspended for disruptive behavior for a couple days. I've been getting in trouble with the administration ever since elementary school. Over the past four years I've had 19 referrals for insubordination. They told me if I got one more, I'd be expelled. Then a couple of weeks ago I was walking down the hall, and this kid said, 'Hey, can you help me get the candy out of the machine? It's stuck in there.' It was a Starburst hanging horizontally, and he was like, 'You know how to do it. This will be easy.' So I shake the machine a little bit, and I kind of hit it once, and it still wasn't coming. All throughout this time people were gathering around. I didn't like the attention, and I couldn't get it out of there. Then some teacher came over, and as I was shaking it, he grabbed me. People said it looked like he was about to put me in a headlock. I take stuff like that very personally--people touching me--so I just turned around, and I just kind of pushed him off of me. He said, 'Get in the office.' And I was like, 'What are you doing? Listen, I was just trying to get this candy out for this kid,' and he just kept saying the same thing to me, and he was all pissed off. So I went to the office, and I could tell this is something that could quite possibly turn into something serious--like the referral that would get me expelled. The principal came and talked to me, which is first of all significant because it is usually the vice-principal that deals with discipline. She was like, 'What do you think is the appropriate way to deal with the candy being stuck in the machine?' And I was like, 'Well, shake it out. I mean, what else can you do?' She's like, 'No,' and I was like, 'No, what? What else do you want me to do?' And she was like, 'There's a person that you talk to to get it taken care of,' and I was like, 'Well, is that person in this school?' She was like, 'Well, no,' and I was like, 'Well, there you go.' She's like, 'Well, nevertheless and blah, blah.' And I was like, 'Well, I hear what you're saying, but, you know, that wasn't clear to me, and so that doesn't justify getting physical with a student.' And she was like, 'Well, I'm going to give him the option of writing a referral.' And I was like, 'On what grounds?' And she was like, 'For insubordination.' And I was like, 'What do you mean? Insubordination of what?' And she was like, 'Because, you know, because you turned around and pushed him.' And I was like, 'Well, that's self-defense, you know,' and she's kind of like mocking me with her tone and her response, and I was like, 'I'll argue this to the top. This is bullshit, and I am not going to get kicked out of school for this.' And she still was kind of mocking me and like 'Yeah, right.' But nothing ever came of it. I know it's partly where I'm coming from, but I also know that a lot of the time it's fear on the part of teachers and people not knowing how to react to certain kids. I've never been able to take unjust stuff. I've always tested people and stood up for myself. I know a lot of kids don't do that, so I think adults are not used it, and that scares them. It seems like I'm more prone to not get along with teachers who either aren't confident or are confident but kind of overly arrogant and disrespectful. Teachers who are passionate about what they teach I really respect and can get involved with. Last year, for instance, I was in senior English with Ms. Blackstone. It was a great class. I had full attention and respect for her. I think of myself as a smart guy, and I think of myself as a partyer, but I feel like I can't really access my whole potential because I feel a lot of stress. I know that I could be harnessing a lot more of my mind than I am right now. For a while, I got into Zen Buddhism. I didn't turn on my radio or go to parties. I didn't miss them, but then I started again because I thought I ought to. Quite recently, I was assessed with ADHD. I guess it validates some of what's been going on. I decided not to apply to college next year. My dad's indifferent, which is frustrating. My mom's freaking out. My parents lived on a commune for about six years, but they never talk about that era. Neither of them understands me, and I don't look to them for much support. They wouldn't let me play football this year. I made the varsity basketball team, but I quit because I could tell I wasn't going to get along with the coach. The neighborhood that I live in--everyone is pretty loaded, and people like to ask you where you're going to college. I feel self-conscious because people expect you to go. My brother went to Reed when he was 17, got a degree in physics and is doing real well. I don't know. I just know that's not for me right now. It's strange talking about not going to college sometimes because I consider myself to be a person who doesn't care what people think, but actually saying it, I think, 'Wow, people will think, "What a fuck-up!"' This summer, I want to go into the Forest Service and fight fires, be a smoke jumper. After the fire season, I want to travel for as long as I can afford it and come back for the school year in the fall. Eventually, I want to go to UC-Santa Cruz. I could probably get in unless I have something better to do; I did well on the SATs, and I've pretty much been carrying a 3.0. I know that college is going to be altogether different. I mean, that's what everybody says, but there will be some similarities that I need to get away from, like sitting down in classrooms and learning everything from someone else. I want to get more firsthand experience. I want to go and do other things, breathe other air. I know that there is more to the world than what I am seeing in high school. You start thinking, 'That's all there is?' It makes you depressed, you know?