by Eamon Doyle, age 17, University of California at Berkeley

Earlier this year, Eamon Doyle was awarded the 826 Young Author’s Scholarship. This fall, Eamon matriculated at the University of California at Berkeley. He and his fellow 2003 scholarship winners will be keeping a diary this year, much like the one that Chinaka Hodge has been keeping. This is Eamon’s first diary entry.

Okay, I should mention straight away that several people on my floor, including both my roommates, know about this journal and may happen to read it at some point. So while I’d love to tell you all about Jed’s unhealthy obsession with man-on-goat kickboxing snuff films, or that regrettable affair with Patricia and the tainted applesauce, I’ll just have to keep quiet. Besides, I can’t call these people my friends if I don’t respect their privacy.

Now then. Since moving in four weeks ago, I have:

• set up my new computer;


• constructed a massive MP3 playlist;


• spent far too much money on new books and used CDs;


• located a fellow student with whom I haven’t shared a classroom since kindergarten;


• attended every meeting of the Cal humor magazine, as well as a comedy show they put on at the campus pub; and


• seen Imperial Teen at Bottom of the Hill — and subsequently met Will Schwartz (woohoo!).

What I’ve come to realize is that I love everything about college except the school part. I mean, when I can choose to divide my time between reading the new Tom Tomorrow book, hunting down a rare King Missile album, and gorging myself on this really good lemon poppy-seed cake they have in the cafeteria, classes seem almost like an afterthought.

Then again, they can be quite useful. The required-reading list for my comparative literature class gave me the incentive to finally give up my post as Only Person on Planet Earth Who Has Never Read a Harry Potter Book (OPPEWHNRHPB); we’re studying Sorcerer’s Stone in between Toni Morrison and Franz Kafka, and I think that’s rather neat.

In other news, I bought a new guitar about a week ago. It’s a beautiful acoustic with a mildly embarrassing model name: the Big Baby. When I buy a guitar, I want to be able to use its name offhandedly without people giving me looks of frightened confusion, as though I might be referring to my stage moniker at Crazy Horse. But having a pair of guitars at my bedside has made me a good four percent cooler. People come by at night and ask me to play for them, and I happily proceed to murder a perfectly good Weezer or Josh Joplin tune. Good times.

My mom just called. Apparently back home they’ve received my first-ever magazine rejection slip. There are no words for how special I feel right now. Never again will I be rejected for the first time. Send well-wishes and/or vegan cookies to me care of Clark Kerr Campus, 2601 Warring Street, Berkeley, CA 94720.

I’d like to close by telling you about the squirrels.

When I went to the Go UC! conference last fall, I was given a pamphlet with a cover picture of a girl diving off a cliff, accompanied by, in elegant lettering, the words: “Let the rest of them be just anybody. That’s not enough for me. I’m getting ready to show the world that I am somebody.” Several months later, in the package informing me of my acceptance to Berkeley, I was told: “The sound you hear is the world opening up at your feet. It’s the sound of ideas popping. Of every language, every point of view. Of conga drums, carillons, and a thousand things you’ve never known before.”

Here’s what I don’t understand: why, in all the gushing literature about conga drums and carillons, is there never a word about the squirrels? The Berkeley campus has dozens, if not hundreds, of really, really cute squirrels. You’ll be walking to class and one of ’em will just drop out of nowhere and give you that little wiggly-nose move and then shake his tail and scamper up the nearest tree — it’s just friggin’ adorable. And it makes me more than a little angry that my school has published document after document, for who knows how many years now, with never a mention of its first-class resident rodents. Are you listening, bigwigs? Methinks it’s time for you to ditch Little Miss Cliffdiver and get your priorities straight.

Maybe if this writing thing doesn’t work out, I’ll go into marketing. Yeah, marketing. That’s the ticket.