The Procrastinating Writer

I took a little time off school after completing the first semester of my junior year at the University of Notre Dame. After being out for about a year, I realized I should start making a real push to finally graduate before I was out for so long that it’d be difficult to go back. To help the process along, I enrolled in a class at Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame’s all-women sister school across the street run by the Sisters of the Holy Cross. The classes were cheaper there when taken one at a time, and I was able to transfer the credits easily to ND upon completion.

Even though I went to school right across the street (and spent nearly every fall of my childhood driving from West Virginia to Indiana for Notre Dame football games), I’d never really spent much time on the SMC campus. To avoid looking like a clueless tool on my first day of class, Carey and I decided to take a walk around the quaint campus on a beautiful late-summer afternoon before the start of the semester.

After wandering around for a while and then camping out on a bench to smoke an offensive amount of cigarettes—how our walks usually ended up—we headed back to the car. We’d parked in a small lot in front of the sisters’ convent, and although the lanes between cars were two-way, only a single car could drive through at a time without causing an accident. Continue reading →

After my sophomore year of college, I spent the summer of 2004 as one of two editorial interns hired by The Advocate newsmagazine. The other intern, Steven, was a student at Kent State University and had been hired on full-time. I applied late (no shocker there) after the position had already been filled, but the hiring team was impressed by my resume and LGBT activism and decided to bring me on anyway part-time. Continue reading →