"P.G. Chillin'"*

So as I rode down route 50 (New York Avenue to all of you AU folks) in our family's humorously dilapidated Saturn (a car driving by had knocked off the right side-view mirror), I couldn't help but think of the catching up with the friends and family that will ensue. How exactly I should get around to doing this, I still don't know.

At American, it's difficult to explain my home life and my former school without making it sound either ghetto, trashy, or bland. I went to the largest public school in the state of Maryland. It was (and still is) so overcrowded, that we had to annex an old former middle school down the street for exclusive use of the freshman class alone. While many schools have problems with diversity, our school's population was split 60% black and 40% white. While the school is set in the massive suburb that is Bowie, Maryland, it has a reputation for gang activity, drug use, and, since my freshman year, prostitution. The students can be rowdy, violent, and vulgar.

All the same, I loved my experience there. The teachers I had made me truly enjoy learning. Some of these teachers have become my friends. Although many of the students at the school were ridiculous and some were violent, if you were nice to them, they were nice to you. We used the ridiculous things that we heard or saw around the school as therapy- in my English class, we even had a wall of ridiculous quotes. While others were uncomfortable discussing racism, in my English class we often went off on tangents discussing and laughing about stereotypes. At the end of Junior year, we even had a cultural stereotype food day. As a Jew, I brought in potato latkes.

At Bowie High School, we valued humor, whether it was clever, simple, or just plain vulgar. The latest work of David Sedaris delighted us with the same intensity as the 'Ballad of Maliha', a two-part epic poem on a bathroom stall calling Maliha "a ho". A classmate's semi-erotic poetic ode to fried chicken, "Golden Brown", was possibly the highlight of my Junior year after a class trip to Europe. We took delight in the little things, even if we should be disgusted by them instead of fascinated with them. Bowie High School was a place I felt comfortable being out-of-the-ordinary and still get a good education.

Such a surreal place as Bowie High School deserves more than a comment here or there, but that is all I can give my classmates at AU. I don't feel I'm doing it justice.

At the same time, describing AU to my old friends and family has become a bit of a hassle itself. Some joke that I might become a "pretentious asshole". When I try to tell them about my fellow Eagles, they laugh about "those stuck up private school kids" and their wealth. I felt offended by these remarks about my friends. Even if some of them went to private schools, and even if some of their families are wealthy, they are anything but stuck up. They are proud of their backgrounds and the
schools they went to, but they do not act like they are better than others. I don't feel like I'm giving my fellow Eagles justice to my family and friends at home.

Being a part of the worlds of American University and of Bowie, Maryland are two of my greatest points of pride. Relating them and explaining them to each other, however, is not my favorite thing to do. Still, I must try my best.

*Yes, I am quoting Wale.