TBT #31:, Part II: Blast from the Past

This post was originally written by Pearle Tuason.

I remember when Matt was heading into the last stretch of high school. Now, he’s a pretty smart guy, but he likes his laziness, so his last year in school was a bit of a victory lap more than anything. I couldn’t blame him, really. He had a lot of things to think about aside from his scholastic career, like what the hell to do with the rest of his life. Unlike myself, he wasn’t content to just jump into the university scene without thinking about where he’d want to take his life. Plus, it gave him a little quiet time to volunteer at a nearby elementary school. It was around that time that I got to know him, and it’s that time that exemplifies one of the things I respect the most about him.

And it just so happens that it’s also the best thing ever for February 23, 2005.

From what I remember, he’d been into Creative Writing for only about a year by that time, spending most of his energy in previous semesters in Computer Studies-related classes. I found that really impressive; I’ll make no apologies when I say that some of the most atrocious writing I’ve ever seen was beaten out of the abused keyboard of some code junky looking for English credits. But here was this guy, practically fresh out of high school (he skipped class a lot, so he did spend more time out of it than in it) who, after taking a single Creative Writing class, could come up with pieces that had his teacher thinking about publication.

He’s a natural, to be true. I could tell because I could really sense the satisfaction writing gave him. It’s something we’d talk about at length, and I remember him saying at one point that, odd as it may sound, he wanted to make people cry with his words. I took that to mean he was aware that one of the strengths was the emotion with which his words were charged, and that he wanted to work on it. He wanted that to be his next step in life. But the idea of school became more and more of a dilemma for him, as the post-secondary application deadlines grew closer.

We were talking about it one day and he told me, “I COULD go into Computer Sciences. Get into coding and earn a decent living.” A responsible choice, to be sure, given his skill in that field, but there was quite a bit of hesitation in him.

“My other choice would be to enroll in an Arts program,” he said, as a rather ominous follow-up. He saw both scholastic paths veering violently away from each other, and his decision-making skills were just as split. He felt that one path could lead him directly to success in both a monetary and career sense, and the other was, well, basically either a step towards what he wanted or a step towards being a super-qualified burger flipper.

He asked me what I thought would be a good choice. I was already in university at the time, still trying to figure out how to specialize in something — ANYTHING. All I knew about school was that, if you don’t go in doing what you want to do, you’re not going to do very well, unless you got lucky. Or were a super-brain (both of which he is, I believe, but that’s another story).

He already knew what he wanted to do with his life. By that time, writing had become more than a passtime, or even a passion. It had become a conviction. It’s something he knew might not earn him a living, but something he just had to do. The number of creative writing pieces he wrote shot up quite a bit, as can be seen in the early archives of this site. Around that time, he also started working for a local newspaper and was that publication’s sports editor for a while, and around that time, he also started working for a local newspaper and was that publication’s sports editor for a while.

I don’t rememeber hearing too much about Computer Sciences after that point. Instead, he went actively looking into post-secondary programs involved in English and writing, eventually deciding on the University of King’s College in Nova Scotia, a school with one of the better Journalism programs.

In the end, I think that was the right decision, and, really, that’s one of the things I like the most about him: he is uncompromising when it comes to being true to himself. I think that’s the reason why he’s doing pretty well for himself these days. Sure, he thinks school sucks, but, he’s pretty happy; that one choice has led him along a trail that he’s blazing all his own, surrounded by a great group of classmates and friends, doing what he feels is right, rather than what other people may dictate as being right.