It is August 2007, and I’m sitting in my freshman dorm at Wheaton College. A few days after arriving on campus to record-setting rains and a few days before classes began, there was one unified, collective priority: internet. In those days we hadn’t yet realized how bad the internet would be: how low the bandwidth, how weak the wifi, and just how persistent(ly annoying) the Bradford Agent. They were simple times—the first iPhone had just been released, for example, and few of us had even heard of Twitter—and we were simply excited to check our email and Facebook. Yet so few of us could.
Somehow I had very quickly found my way online,1before all but a few dorm-mates, when in walked my future roommate. Andrew was astounded to find that I had internet access, and was even more astonished at how quickly I went through the same walkthrough (this time from memory) for him. News quickly spread of the “computer genius” in room 207 who could configure everyone’s internet settings. That news began to change just as quickly when Mac users came asking for help, only to leave disappointed.2
That said, I not only made a life-long friend that day, but I established for him a reputation as a computer nerd, a reputation that has endured (in his mind, anyway), however facetiously. Here on Day 2 at the Flatiron School, I’m only at the very beginning of my effort to establish that reputation in reality, but check in again in three months! Until then, for those who missed the memo, this is what I’ll be doing ‘til April and beyond.