High School

I have to find myself. To build my own unique personality. I have to be me: special or whatever, but different.

And I need a girlfriend.

Here is my difference: I don’t smoke (all my friends walk around with a cigarette), I dress like I joined a New Wave band (all my friends wear posh brands like Chevignon), I read Philippe Djian, John Fante, Charles Bukowski, Kerouac, Brautigan, Hemingway (all my friends read Stephen King) and I don’t have a girlfriend (all my friends do).

Well, no plan is ever perfect.

On the writing side of things, I keep filling spiral-bound notebooks. I even win a short story contest at my high school. But I don’t tell anyone, I don’t even collect it for fear that my friends will make fun of me.

On the school side of things, I’m a regular nuisance in class, my German grades are below F minus, but I do alright at Sciences. As a consequence, I take an interest in somewhat « fringe » subjects: psychic phenomena, biology and the brain. And I have an epiphany: there is a line of work for studying the strange things that take place in the human body. It’s rational, scientific and parents approved. They call it « medicine ».

Cool.

How about being a doctor then?

Besides, I don’t have the faintest idea what else I could do.