User:Thebartonc

When I am asked what CTY means to me, it means the world to me. It's where I met my favorite people in the world, it's where I met people who literally saved my life, in fact, it is the place that showed me I should stay. It is at CTY that I met people who shared my interests, and showed me that being a nerd is pretty damn cool.

15.1

Ah, yes. My first year at CTY. The year where I was a wide-eyed rookie CTYer. It was here when I fell in love with CTY and what it stands for. I fell in love with the fact that the average CTYer is about a thousand and a half times more interesting than the average person at my school. Thinking back I was pretty anti-social, I didn't have many friends. However, I ended learning American Pie (lyrics, callbacks, the whole thing). I knew I was coming back even before the session ended.

16.2

I took one of the most unorthodox courses at CTY, Whales and Estuary systems. About half the session is spent onboard the Lady Maryland and we learned how to sail and we studied the ocean and whales. Sans shower. Class was cool and all but someone from the same floor as me the year prior, Rohan, happened to be in my class! I ended up meeting many cool people, especially, Isabel DeMarco and Carolina Pachetti. This session led to my first ever CTY reunion, albeit a rather small-scale one, when I got together with Isabel and Carolina over winter break.

17.2

"Sometimes, we take way too much for granted." -Sunny

Maybe one of the best sessions ever, and not just because I'm back at Easton. From 16.2 to 17.2, it felt like an eternity and I have no idea why. I took Anatomy and Physiology B and ended up turning the whole class against me because of how terrible my puns were. You can go out on a limb and say my anatomy puns were bad ;). About halfway through the session, a fun-loving TA and a friend of mine, Jeffery, passed away. It devastated the whole ANPY.B class. As Austin Szatrowski and I were the ones with the most CTY experiences, I felt like it was an obligation to take a leadership role (reading Teammates by David Ross really helped). I will never forget the long Skype video calls Sunny (check out Jenny From the Block on Memories:EST) and I had at 1-3AM. I will never forget my lab partner Austin Szatrowski probably wanting to dismember me with a scalpel for all my terrible (read: state of the art) jokes. He never said it but I bet you any amount of money that he thought about it (*frantically Googles if killing a CTYer is considered CTYI*).

I had a gut feeling that this session was going to be great after I saw Sebastian "Not John" Reardon, who was in my hall in 15.1 and Fernando Martinez who shared a floor with my hall in 16.2. When we first saw each other we literally enacted the meme with two Spidermen pointing at each other, not gonna lie.

Outside of class, I got to know many other amazing human beings, courtesy of Austin and Sunny, many of whom I would keep in touch with for a long while after camp, including but not limited to, Carly Berglas, Isabel Yang, Aubrey Grayson Young, Hannah Gallagher (Orioles suck), Ahir Verma, and Ella Junge.

I had an amazing hall (cult) led by an amazing RA (cult leader), Jim (We get it, you go to Yale). Austin Szatrowski, Robert Lee, Allan Potts, Justin Baumann, Fernando Martinez, Jonathan, Zared, Andy, Pony, thank you for being great hallmates.

I actually had a good time at the dances, it's kind of a big change from 15.1

Similar to last year, I had a couple get-togethers over winter break, with Nikki Belenkiy in New Jersey, with Sunny in Irvine, California.

This was the first year where I had major, and I mean MAJOR, PCTYD.

Easton is starting to become my second home.

Notable Quotes:

"Can't you see Austin is cockblocking you?" -Syd

"So what do you think about Sunny?" -Octavia

"One more pun and you'll out of here." -Austin and Bill

"Only two sane guys" -Austin, in the bathroom after a dissection and ALL the other guys got yelled at for waving scalpels around

"The veteran, the friend" -Justin

18.2

18.2 was an *interesting* and eventful session, to say the least. I reunited with many CTYers from the year prior, including my hallmate Robert Lee, classmate and close friend Carly Berglas, and you wouldn't believe this, Isa DeMarco. I knew Robbie and Carly were going to be there but seeing Isa there was a complete surprise. We had fallen out of touch and this shows how sometimes, life just figures itself out. It was really amazing seeing all of them again. Then there's you, Bradley (KIDDING I LOVE YOU!). There was a surprising (or should I say, alarming?) amount of SAS Pudong folks (Puxi is better). I got to know some amazing people this session, especially in Amelia Orwant