During my freshman year at Cornell, I joined my dorm's intramural football team. At the first practice, upper classmen pointed out I was tall, so I should try playing QB. Well half an hour later, it was abundantly clear that I should not be the QB.
I was about 6-foot-3 my freshman year of high school, and after the summer, I was about 6-foot-8. It all happened so fast. I went into the summer being tall, and when I came back, I was a giant. My knees, man, they were throbbing all the time. I couldn't sit in the car for long stretches; my knees felt like they were going to explode.
At first, after my freshman year, it was kind of a joke, going into my sophomore year like, 'Hey, I wanna graduate in three years, two-and-a-half.' And we were just kind of playing with it, added some extra classes in, and then once I finished that following spring going into that next summer, it was just like, 'Hey, I can actually do it.'
In high school, I was one of the cofounders of New Kids on the Block my freshman year in high school. But I also started studying theatre in high school my freshman year as well. So throughout high school, I was actually doing both.
In my freshman year in high school, I went to the only public high school in Boston with a theatre program.
I'm probably not supposed to say this, but the truth is, there were so many times when I thought about quitting basketball, even when I was at Louisville. My freshman year, I shot 18 for 72 from three.
So in my freshman year at the University of Alabama, learning the literature on evolution, what was known about it biologically, just gradually transformed me by taking me out of literalism and increasingly into a more secular, scientific view of the world.
In my freshman year of high school, I don't think I had a single date. I was really shy, really timid and quiet. I had my first real date when I was a sophomore, with a girl from church.
Having been kept pretty strict in prep schools, I guess I couldn't cope with all the freedom at Yale. I had a wild, wonderful time, got abysmal grades and was bounced out in my freshman year. I then came back the following fall as a repeating freshman, lasted until April and got bounced out again - for the same reason.
My freshman year of high school I joined the chess and math clubs.
