When you were graduating high school, what did you want to be? Where were you? Did you choose your college (if you went to one), or did it choose you?

How much did legacy fall into play?

What did you want to do, and what did you end up doing?

I always thought I was going to go to grad school, and now I just don't think I need it. Maybe later, but I was going to use grad school to make connections, and it seems I'm making them just fine on my own. That's unique to acting/writing, I assume.

I went to high school in Katy, TX, and went to UT Austin for college. BFA acting. I chose UT because it was affordable and near my home. I did get into Carnegie Mellon, DePaul and St. Edwards (private school in Austin), but the money became the deciding factor. Especially with Carnegie Mellon.

I'm still doing what I thought I'd be doing, but I never thought I'd still be in Austin. I also never thought I'd be writing as much as I am. I always wrote growing up, and I watched my dad write for publications, but seeing the troubles he was having with it, I assumed I'd never get the chance to do it. I'm pleasantly surprised.

-- Anonymous, May 04, 2000

Answers

Oh man, oh man, oh man. This is perfect. Uh, just a note here: Could you all say what college you attended, and whether you liked it? Maybe a few words describing your experience? Because I could really use the input. Gracias.

-- Anonymous, May 04, 2000

Wow this is a multi-faceted post. Deep breath. Here goes

When I graduated high school (in '91), I wanted to be a concert pianist. I got accepted to Oberlin (ohio), Vanderbilt, TCU (Texas), and Hendrix (Arkansas). I ended up going to Hendrix because of money. No legacy on it at all.

It was okay. I had some bad experiences there that have tainted by view of it but I learned a lot.

I decided that I didn't want to be a concert pianist after all when I realized that most of them are professors at universities. I didn't want that at ALL. I knew that I wouldn't be living in Arkansas and I don't. (DC) but I would have NEVER thought that I'd be in law school.

But here I am and I'm going to be a criminal defense attorney like those guys on the Practice.

-- Anonymous, May 04, 2000

When I graduated high school, I wanted to be a political speech writer. I have no idea where that aspiration came from. I think because I liked politics and writing.

I chose my college, sort of. I applied to a state school (safety), a private liberal arts school (fallback) and an Ivy League. I got into all three, but the financial aid package from the Ivy League was ridiculous, so I went to the private liberal arts (LeMoyne College here in Syracuse. No, not Des Moines. LeMoyne. Yeah, like that Catholic guy.) Anyway, I started out a political science major, but about halfway through I realized that I had taken all the courses that interested me (i.e. Women in Media, Women in Politics, American Presidency). So I switched to English because their courses looked more fun. I don't know what I thought I was going to do with that one.

So now I'm finishing up grad school in Information Studies and trying to launch a career in web design and consulting. The web didn't even exist when I was in high school, and it barely existed (the web, not the Internet) when I was in college, so I definitely did not know I was going to do this.

Plus, I always thought I would move to Washington, DC. And here I am, still in Upstate NY. By choice. I never would have guessed that one.

-- Anonymous, May 04, 2000

When I was graduating, I wanted to do something involving language. Maybe be a linguist, or a language teacher, or something like that. I eventually realized that I would dislike teaching high school, and sometime after that realized that linguistics is really, really nifty. Um. At least, to me it is. Semantics, particularly. I went to high school in North Carolina, in a tiny little town near the coast. I got accepted to UNC-Chapel Hill, they gave me a free-ride, and I dropped out before the first semester was over. Now, I'm in Michigan. I came here for love, got married, and now I'm at Michigan State. I'm studying linguistics, but right now I just don't know if I really want to go to grad school and get into academics. That's a whole lot of work, too many fucking papers to write, and I'm about at the end of my tolerance for that sort of thing -- I should have my BA in linguistics next May. My latest ambition is to get a masters in library science (information science, whichever), and get a job as a librarian until (and this is an if, really) I decide that I want to get my PhD or just my Masters in linguistics.

It's a little bit sad for me to go 'maybe I shouldn't do this,' when it comes to academics. I'm just not... driven enough, right now, and I don't know when I will be. Going to grad school just because it seems like the right thing to do would probably be perfectly awful. It took me a long time to figure that out. Going to grad school so I can get a job I like, now, that seems like a good idea. I'm working in a library right now, and I generally like it. It's an acceptable way to make money, and it'll have flexible hours, and it'll mean that I can still do other things that I want to without feeling like a zombie all the time.

Lately, I'm even thinking that staying in Michigan might not be that bad. See, now, that's pretty crazy. I've just decided that I value having these friends more than I thought I did.

-- Anonymous, May 04, 2000

Um I guess I am unique... when I applied to college in the fall of my senior year, I wanted to major in Computer Science... and now I'm a paid programmer... but anyway...

First part of my college decision was money. Three schools gave me a basically free ride (thanks to being poor and smart), but one was in upstate New York (cold!) and one was 30 minutes from home.

Second part, distance. I don't really like Louisiana very much, and what I really really wanted was to go to TAMU, but they didn't give me enough money.

Third part, prestige. The third school was Duke University. I think we know what I did now.

I never really thought about grad school until my junior year of college, which was almost too late, really. I knew I wanted to work and earn money, though. I really wavered a lot freshman and sophomore year on my major (from Math to Drama!), but ultimately it came down to two things: I didn't want to be poor, and I really did like programming a lot.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000

I had grown up in suburban New Jersey, and just wanted to be somewhere else. *Anywhere* else. I decided to major in computer science because I'd liked the whole one programming course my high school offered, and both my parents were in CS, so it seemed like the thing to do. (Yes, three years later I realize that was not the right way to make that decision.)

At any rate, I applied to Carnegie Mellon, Brown, Rochester Polytechnic Institute, Dartmouth, Princeton, and Stevens Institute of Technology. No legacy involved; my parents both went to Johns Hopkins and I didn't have any particular interest. At any rate, I fell in love with Carnegie Mellon. I guess I'll never know, maybe it was just because it was the first place I visited and I was so damn excited about a future outside New Jersey. But I spent all of an hour on campus before deciding this was where I wanted to be. So once my (mostly but not all) acceptances came in, my decision was really easy.

I'm still struggling through a CS degree here, but I think I really should have picked some other field. And I won't be at all surprised if I don't do anything much with the CS degree when I graduate.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000

I graduated Westfield HS (Houston) in 1992 and went on to TCU in Fort Worth. I picked my college because they gave me money, and I was scared to death of going to a school as big as UT or A&M.

In my senior memory book, it said "In ten years, I want to be...." And this is the funny part...I wrote "ambassador to Russia." Woo! Well, I took two years of Russian, learned barely a lick of it and decided to go for that English/history double major that lands all the big- paying jobs!

I always planned on grad school too, but after watching my husband wade through the past three years on his way to his PhD (only three more to go!), I have decided it just ain't for me. I never in a million years would've guessed that I'd be running my own kids' theater program, but it's what keeps me going. There's too much to do in the world to go back to school. At least for me.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000

I graduated from high school in 1993 and went to Texas Tech University, only because they were cheap and they gave me money. I got into three others schools - Cornell College (very small liberal arts college in Iowa), Randolph-Macon Women's College (very small all girls liberal arts college in Virginia), and DePaul University. They all offered me scholarships, but there was still no way I could afford to go to any of them, so off to a state university for me - a decision I regret to this day for a variety of reasons I won't bore you with here.

When I graduated from Tech with a degree in history and English, I was going straight to grad school for museum studies. On a fluke, I got a job in marketing at a symphony orchestra and decided to defer my admission until the following fall. Over the course of that year, I got promoted twice and was making pretty decent money, so I blew off grad school completely.

I am just now starting the process of looking into schools again and retaking the GRE in order to apply for the fall of 2001. I have no idea where I might wind up, and after three years at the same oranization living in the same city, that's kind of exciting. So eventually I will wind up doing what I want to be doing, just about four or five years later than I expected.

The irony of the whole situation is that when I was a junior in high school, I wanted to be an orchestra manager. My 17 year old self would have probably thought my job now was the coolest, but my 25 year old self is less than thrilled.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000

I graduated from a DoDDs school in Kaiserslautern Germany in 1990. I ended up at The University of Tampa for two main reasons: 1 - I was a full ROTC scholarship and the school offered free room and board on top of that 2 - My grandparents lived in town.

I selected UT because when I had come back to the states to interview for an academy nomination I saw the school and thought - Wow great architecture. Of course at the time I didn't realize that it was a private school that cost way too much money. The money of course didn't matter after I got the scholarship.

The Air Force picked my major for me. At the end of my second year I lost my scholarship because I was unable to maintain my weight standards (this is a whole topic in itself) and then the money became an issue. I stuck it out because I was two years into it and I would have lost credit hours by transferring to another school.

I am now a manager with a systems integration company. Some days I love it and other days I think I want to just become a postal carrier.

I've moved around a lot and have finally put my foot down and said I am putting roots down in Atlanta. So far it is agreeing with me, and in another 5 years I should have all the student loans and Air Force paid off.

I have rarely thought about going to grad school because I hated the first experience so much, and so far it hasn't impacted my ability to make decent money.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000

When I graduated high school, all I wanted to do was get the hell out of Atoka County, OK -- we'd moved there from the Dallas area the summer before my frosh year, and I hated it. Dirt, cows, and rednecks. The University of Oklahoma offered to sponsor me for a National Merit scholarship and throw the most money at me, so that's where I went.

I started out as a pre-pharmacy major, then realized how much I hated Chemistry after it was too late to change my class schedule. So the next semester I switched to Journalism. That was the winter/spring semester of 1994, the same time as the Menendez brothers trial, Amy Fisher and the Buttafuocos (sp?) were still in the news, white trash posterchild Tanya Harding had just paid her ex-husband to whack that prissy bitch Nancy Kerrigan in the knee, and it was right before OJ stabbed his ex-wife. Needless to say, I lost my respect for the American news media in all forms for making heroes out of lowlifes and idiots. At the end of my second semester, I dropped out. Collegiate life (and Oklahoma) weren't for me. After spending the summer with my mom, I moved back to Texas and got a job.

(Oh, I left out the part where I discovered the internet two weeks into my first semester. By February of my second semester, I stopped going to all my classes except for one Theatre class, and that's because it was at night. But don't worry, there's still a happy ending. It was the 'net that got me interested in computers.)

In hindsight, I probably would have gotten a degree if I'd been able to take a year off between high school and college to get my head together. But I was so burned out on the educational system that I couldn't stand it anymore. And I was lucky -- the field I happened to end up in is one that respects experience and/or ability more than a diploma. Your mileage may vary.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000

Legacy: both of my parents graduated from Stanford University but I didn't have the grades to go there.... After graduating from high school I attended San Jose State for 2 years; then transfered to Humboldt State and graduated from there. What a contrast.

 I lived with my parents and drove to San Jose State. SJSU is a very large school, catering mostly to local residents. I never made any acquaintances in the two years I attended; I hung out with my high school buddies (none attended SJSU).  ... Humboldt State is a 7 hour drive from my parents and is located in Arcata (in a very rural corner of California). As a junior I didn't live in the dorms, but settled into off-campus student housing. Lots of fun, lots of friends (turning 21 helped too!).

I graduated with a degree in mathematics but knew that I'd be working with computers.  Back to the SF Bay area for "real" work, as the Humboldt Bay area just doesn't have anything (very nice place to live, though).  I've been working in all aspects of computer systems; programming (the math background really helps!), analysis and project management.  ....But, if I had to do it all over again (with proper hindsight) , I'd have stayed at SJSU and majored in Electrical Engineering (I'd probably be a multi-millionaire now).

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000

When I was graduated from high school in 1983 (yeah, I'm super old!) I wanted to be an obstetrician. I had decided to go to the University of South Florida in Tampa. I even made it to the Freshman/Parents Orientation weekend! And then I found out I was pregnant. Well, hrm, that kinda changed my plans a bit. I decided to keep the baby. When my son was 5 I decided to go back to school. I was going to become an Interpreter for the Deaf. After a year I decided, for many insane reasons to marry a guy in the program and ended up marrying him and beginning a descent into hell which included not finishing my degree. It's now 10 years later and my son is 16 and I'm almost divorced (been working on that for two years!) and I'm starting back to school this summer. I really excited about it and will work toward a computer programming degree. I want to be a web programmer geek type.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000

well i only graduated in 1998 so i don't know if i'm qualified to answer, but here goes:
I knew I wanted to study anthropology and i wanted a private school in the midwest, which limited my choices to Beloit College in Wisconsin and Hamline University in St. Paul, MN. I chose Hamline because of financial and distance factors. I'm a junior now. When I came here I thought I'd do archaeology and a little cultural anthropology, but then I found out how astoundingly boring archaeology can be. It's not all cool Discovery channel stuff, it's more like hours and hours of looking at bits of broken glass under a magnifier.
Luckily I then realized that Hamline has one of the best undergraduate forensic science programs in the nation, at the same time I realized that I love human remains (not like that! gross!). I've had incredible field work opportunities here through virtue of knowing the right professors and weaseling my way into going on jobs with them. I just went on a cemetary dig today. mmm, bones :)
Dunno if i'll get a job doing it though. I don't have much motivation for grad school. I guess we shall see.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000

What did I want to be? No idea (then or now). Chose the University of New South Wales late in 1992 when I discovered you could do film studies there. Along the way I decided writing about films was easier than making them, and eventually I got myself into community radio doing a film program and am currently working with one of my fellow jocks on a film review website. So I'm finally really doing what I eventually thought I would. But until quite late in the day at high school, I didn't know.

-- Anonymous, May 06, 2000

ah, I'm not at all qualified for this question. I graduated just last year, 1999. I decided to take a year off because I slacked off senior year with bouts of depression and never took my sats or planned for college. I also, very much hated school. I actually cried while serving community service [for missing 10 days of school in one semester] to get my diploma in august of that following summer.

I'm still not in college and am not sure when I'm going to go but I really, really would like to take web design at the art institute of houston, since I excel in that area. I remember teachers used to ask me for help with their computer stuff...heh.

for now, I have one client [so business saavy]. I will be designing the website for the yoga institute of houston for money very very soon. my mom will be giving me the packet when the owner is ready..yippie!

soo you can say, I'm already quite lucky to have gotten my portfolio looked at.

-- Anonymous, May 06, 2000

I went to high school in Maryland, and up until my junior year I was determined to go anywhere but the state school. Both my parents went to Penn State (my brother wound up there as well), we'd all go up for football games every year, and I figured that's where I would attend college.

I applied to both Maryland and Penn State's honors programs, as well as Penn and Virginia. Penn dissed me (no great shock there) and I was waitlisted at UVA. I got into the Maryland honors and Penn State scholars' programs, and Penn State was going to give me enough money where cost wasn't a factor in the decision.

The thing was, Maryland did a much better job of selling itself to me. Its honors program was just emerging as a really good one, and the students at the Maryland functions I went to seemed really laid- back and down-to-earth. At the Penn State thing I went to, all the prospectives seemed really full of themselves (ed. note: All the Penn State students I've met since have been very cool, so maybe I just had bad luck that day). The University of Maryland is located right between Washington and Baltimore, so it wasn't like I'd be stuck on campus with nothing to do (Penn State is kind of in the middle of nowhere). Plus -- and this may sound weird -- none of my close friends were going to Maryland. I have some close high-school friends who I still keep in touch with, but I didn't want college to be a rerun of high school. So I chose Maryland and have no regrets. It's a great place to go to school.

I knew I wanted to be a sportswriter (at least, I knew at the time), but every journalist I talked to said not to major in journalism -- to write for the school paper, but concentrate my studies in something else. So I majored in English and history (not that you could tell from my forum posts), and here I am.

FWIW.

-- Anonymous, May 06, 2000

When I was a kid there were only two things that I really wanted to do, be a writer or an actor. I was involved with a few different community theater groups in middle school then a real theater company as a teenager (one of the only minors) so I naturally decided that I was to go to college for theater.

Because I was so concerned with acting and stuff, I didn't put in a lot of time on my schoolwork. Not that it would have mattered, my school was 19th from the bottom in the state of MA. I got no real "guidance" on how to pick a school and apply and what to expect, even though I was in the honors program.

A friend of mine from the company went to Salem State, she said they had a great theater department. I saw a few of their productions, found out that one of their actors won the Irene Ryan Acting Fellowship and decided that would be where I would apply. I also applied to Emmerson and NYU, but I figured I would go to Salem for a year, get all of the general education classes out of the way for two grand before going on to a more expensive school.

I did take a semester off between high school and college to pursue and opportunity in a grant-funded production on the history of the Blackstone Valley. I think that is one of the things I regret the most about college. I ended up going to school in January when all the stupid cliques (sorry Allison, you won't leave that behind in HS, unfortunately) had already formed and firmed up and I was most assuredly the interloper in my dorm. Plus it was wierd in the fall telling people I was a second semester sophomore.

Around the time I went off to college I was questioning whether or not I wanted to stick with theater. I was getting a little sick of the theater attitude, so I switched from acting to set design figuring techies were not as self-centered and melodramatic as actors. * Everything* was a competition with these people (pamie, do you find this in your theater troup?). If you were tired, someone was more tired. If you were hungry, someone hadn't eaten in two days. If you were trying to study for a mid-term, someone had two mid-terms, was starring in a show and directing two others.

Most of the people in the department were the prima donnas of their high school drama club, only Rocket, Dave Garret, Paula, and I had any experience in "the real world." All of us became techies.

I also found there was this wierd "theater police" thing going on. You had to like David Bowie. You couldn't take hard science courses. You had to hate business students. The theater people were convinced all other students hated them. When kids in my dorm found out I did theater, instead of calling me "fag" and beating me up, they would say, "wow, I wish I could do that, but I would never have the guts."

The day one of the theater police told me (I'm not making this up) "You can never be a real artist because you don't use drugs." I left the department. I transferred to a history major and tried to figure out what I wanted to do.

I had a semester in Ireland coming up and then I decided to study Anthropology, which was not offered at Salem. I actually did a bit of research this time, looking up Anthropology departments in the Gorman Report. I was commited to going to a state school because I can't really afford private school and there's something about those little colleges where everyone lives in a bubble and drives expensive cars that scare the fuck out of me. I wanted to get away from New England, having grown up here, so I went out to Tucson, AZ. The UofA has a great anthro department and I learned more in my first semester there than I did in my two years at Pitt.

Tucson, itself, however, sucked for me. It's a real conservative city in a real conservative state. They don't take kindly to queers like me there, so I ended up leaving after a year. I wound up in Pittsburgh more because I had some good friends there than for any other reason. I went to Pitt to finish up my degree.

Pittsburgh is a beautiful city and I really didn't want to leave, but there are *no* jobs there at all. There's barely even the low-wage service economy thing going on it seems, and I didn't just spend four.. well.. five years in college to get out and work at the beehive coffee house. My degree was in anthropology but this was 1996, pretty early on in the growth of the web. I had been volunteering with envirolink helping them build websites for small environmental organizations. I used that on my resume to get a job building websites back in MA, right by where I grew up (my folks had begun sending me the Providence Journal and the Boston Globe classifieds).

Am I where I thought I would be when I was in HS? No. Hell, The net barely existed although I was a fan of BBSs. So I didn't think I would have this day job, but I thought I would probably have a kickass computer with like a hundred megahertz chip (could they ever make them that fast??) running a telegard BBS. I think I thought I would either run a coffee shop/bookstore with a (gasp) gaming section in the back or a small theater company dedicated to fun, low-priced, lowbrow stuff with lots of physical theater.

I thought I would be writing but I figured it would be scripts or science fiction stories or something. I never thought I would have run my own magazine and dedicated nearly a decate to trying to keep it afloat through any media. I never thought I would be writing about economic policy or facing down riot cops in DC.

Wierd how things turn out.

-- Anonymous, May 08, 2000

i went to high school in a little town in mass and when i graduated in '97, decided that i didn't want to go to college right away. so, i packed my bags and went to live and work on a horse farm in ireland for a year. that experience grounded me incredibly, and i went off to my small liberal arts college in upstate new york, have worked my ass off and now rarely get a grade lower than an a. i love it. i had always wanted to be a vet though, and after fall term chem my freshman year, i decided to be an art major. :) i am now a double major in studio art and italian studies (which is actually an individually designed major) and am looking at doing an honors project my senior year. soooo, i think that taking that year off was the best thing i ever did. :)

-- Anonymous, May 08, 2000

well, in during my senior year of high school, i applied to only one school (mistake #1), and got into only one school. anyway, it was a really tiny, very liberal, liberal arts school in sarasota, florida. i graduated high school in 1994 and went off to college with dreams of becoming a rich pyschologist (mistake #2). i found out very soon that i was totally and completely unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with college and being away from home. needless to say, i dropped out after the first year, and went to work in the local video store.

after about 2 years in the real world a la video store, i met my fiance, a smart, funny, college-grad who saw that i was wasting my life; he encouraged me to try again (good thing #1). we moved to austin (good thing #2) and i started taking classes again in 1999. now, i have plans to become a nurse, specializing in pediatrics (good thing #3 - i love kids).

-- Anonymous, May 08, 2000

What about the college to non-college transition? I just graduated with a BA in Theatre Arts, with a minor in creative writing (my first love) and have NO CLUE what I'm doing. I'm pretty much paralyzed with fear and for the first time in my life I have no plan for the future. Anyone got advice? Or want to hire me?

-- Anonymous, May 08, 2000

Thanks, you guys, for yer input! I really appreciate it! After reading all of your posts, I have decided that I shall:
1)Move out of the house and never come back.
2)Go to Oberlin.
3)Major in psychology, minor in Literature, Molecular Biology, Anthropology, writing, and drama.
4)Write a movie starring Angelina Jolie, Ashley Judd, Leonardo DiCaprio (No apologies!), Laura Kightlinger, Janeane Garofalo, Ben Stiller, Joaquin Phoenix, and...Jennifer Love Hewitt will want to be in it, but I'll snub her.
5)Write a bestseller.


Well, not necessarily in that order...gotta be realistic about these things.

-- Anonymous, May 08, 2000

I went to the University of Oklahoma.

My dad went there. Four of my uncles, most of my cousins and one of my older brothers.

My other brother went to Texas A & M.

yikes.

I am a speech pathologist....it's what I've wanted to do since I was young.

I want to go to grad school. I've been talking about it for 2 years. I need to just do it.

-- Anonymous, May 09, 2000

Wow, I am I the only one who didn't go to college? Well I didn't love high school, not the academic part anyway, the social part was pretty cool. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I think that was the main reason I didn't go to college for long. I did go to a JC for a sememster. But there was like NO social life! Money was also a factor. I was under the impression that there was some big ol' college fund my parents had set up for me, well turned out there wasn't. I don't think I really missed out not going to college. My job is OK, but I still don't know what I want to do for the rest of my life, besides watch TV that is : ) All my friends that went to school are just now graduating, it took them FOREVER! I can't imagine all those years of homework and test and class and YUCK! I don't consider myself a dumbass because I didn't go to college, but I'm no brain surgeon either : )

-- Anonymous, May 09, 2000

Well sinc eI only graduated in 1999 and only haev one year of university behind me...I may not be qualified to answer..but Im going to anyways..and Im going to dare to be different I graduated from a tiny school of 1000 (grades 7-12) in a small town (4000 ppl)in Nova Scotia..applied to and got accepted to 5 university with scholorships from all but one. (only entrance scholorships though) I decided to go to St Francis Xavier In antigonish nova scotia (2.5 hours away from home) It was great..close enough to go home, far enough to stay..not to big, not to small and well known...(ranked 3rd in canada) It was a blast first year, I made the normal mistakes, gaining 10 pounds, not studying enough, not knowning what i want to do etc.. but it was still kick ass :) All I have to do now is figure out what to do with my life..right now I've tentitively picked a major in chem and going on to eithe rphysiotherapy, pharmacy or dentistry..but if next year doesnt' go much better than this year grades wise, i think i will take Information systems and become a systems analyst/prgrammer (get a high paying job down with you states ppl L*) or double major in psychology/sociology.......who knows.i have tons of time to figure it out :0)

Neways for all of you who have never heard of my school (which u likely haven't) go take a look :) Maybe you'll learn somethign new bout Canada (other than the fact taht this Canadian never fixes her typos!)

www.stfx.ca

Monica

-- Anonymous, May 09, 2000

I was supposed to be some kind of solid, respected professional in a field such as law, business, or medicine. So I went to this semi- prestigious high priced southern school. After college I ended up as a guerilla soldier. Right now my current assignment makes me feel as if I'm on Miami Vice staking out a crack dealer's house.

-- Anonymous, May 10, 2000

I don't know i am a poor student i need a scholorship to study in overseas

-- Anonymous, September 16, 2001