Class notes for my high school were due yesterday. After receiving an email from our perky, self-appointed class liaison, I went to the website to check them out. I thought about posting - after all, I've just achieved a milestone in my life. But my old shame rose up to block me: my classmates are all posting about MBAs, PhDs, babies, houses, careers, and here I've just graduated from college. I feel ten years behind, stuck in my adolescence, a loser among the cool kids. I try to remind myself that people only write into the alumni magazine when they have something to boast about. I look at the notes from my friends and think about how glad I am to hear from them, how nice their lives look on paper, purged of the trials and tribulations I've heard about along the way. I could narrate my life in that vein. I could joyfully proclaim my achievements and make them valid by doing so. However, I am stymied by my own doubt about the validity of my achievements. I am stopped by insecurity, the very emotion so often stirred by my experience at Choate and rekindled by my re-entry into the world of academia, social pressure, and the tyranny of success.

The epitome of the "class note"? A little update from a man who writes that he has "taken up triathlons," completing 7 in the last year. Yeah? Well I've watched 2 entire seasons of Entourage and one of Deadwood. Call it the triathlon of television.