Turning around on a one way street.

Winter's occupation seems to have conquered, overrun and destroyed everything, so that now there is no longer any resistance movement left in nature. - John Knowles, A Separate Peace

The recent beauty of sunshine and blue skies has brought me from my Puritanistic response to winter: hide until it's over. Suddenly Winter Quarter seems just like a nightmare, so real and alive in the moment but only a distant memory by the time you wake up. Suddenly I am looking at the same sun I spent my summer idolizing and enjoying.

It was sunny one afternoon on Cape Cod this summer. Katy and I were cruising around town in my dad's car, relishing the fact that we weren't driving my 'jank mobile' through the quiet summer town of Falmouth, Mass. The music was blaring, as per usual with us, the windows were down and we were running out of gas. I pulled over, whacked at the GPS and decided that since I had never been to a BP station (and one was listed only a half mile away) that that was where we were going to go to get gas.

Katy and I arrived at a deserted gas station that had one pump that hadn't worked in any recent decade. There was a driveway off to the side of the station and I decided to pull up it to make my car turn around easier. Thank God, I was a youthful driver who couldn't do tricky turn around and really wanted to go to a BP for gas because up that driveway was the College Light Opera Company.

"9 weeks. 9 shows. Best summer of your life," Katy explained to me, being the more theatrically aware person in our friendship. Later that night we saw a show there and I decided that that's where I wanted to work. I talked to people about it and the dream seemed out of my reach being that I am only a freshman. But I knew that eventually that was where I was going to work.

Thanks to Katy, BP, GPS and my driving ability, I will be the stage manager at the College Light Opera Company this summer in Falmouth, Mass. I am beyond ecstatic for the opportunity to work with such talented performers and musicians and to live on the beach for 9 weeks doing what I love. I await the challenge of being the head stage manager and I cannot wait to remind myself why I am doing this.

CCM and Winter Quarter, you haven't defeated this kid yet.