This is Jack, a unicycling scuba-diving future paleontologist with an intellect as delightful and surprising as a coral reef. Jack says that if you checked his browser history you’d find most of the pages on Wikipedia; he’s as curious as George and he retains like a wall. When we interviewed him for this profile, our conversation was frequently diverted by his encyclopedic knowledge and his enthusiasm for sharing it. When the French form of his name, Jacques, came up, he said, “I’m not into the French form, the French surrender too easily.” But, with a laugh, he quickly corrected himself and explained that by many metrics France has enjoyed as much military success as Britain over the centuries and actually did a very good job hiding their precious art during the World Wars, etc. He also delivered a mini-lesson on American taxi cabs of the 1920s, and shared pictures of cabs with built-in dining tables and dangerous (but fun!) rumble seats and paused our conversation again briefly to break down “hot-wired” vs “hard-wired” for those of us who get confused by those kinds of things and again to identify a lantern fly that landed near us.
Jack is pretty happy to be here, where his electric brain can roam the skies and strike like lightning where it pleases instead of being stuck in a battery. He says, “I can actually learn the things I want to, instead of being bored going over stuff I already know or learning useless things I’m not interested in.” He’s also thrilled to be safe; he says, “for the first time in my life, I’m not being bullied. I used to like sick days more than anything but now I’m like, ‘forget a sick day.’” And finally he notes that he is finding the space to open up and “reach out to other people to share interests…I feel like I’m appreciated for who I am.”
Besides reading wikipedia, Jack enjoys airsoft and clowning, and he’s been working on coding with an expert from our own community for several months. At home he’s been doing some engineering, and he’s building a model train area in his basement. He’s also spearheaded planning a school field trip to go mining for crystals. Jack wants you to know that, “people are generally in the habit of assuming school has to be top-down for people to learn. I get it, because that’s how it’s always been. But they should see this school. We learn a lot. People assume that the kids here are just goofing off but it’s not the reality.”
Jack, the feeling is mutual We are so happy you are on our team. You add so much character, knowledge, and curiosity to the community. Thank you!!!