Dan Brownlee

1.) There are parts of me that I despise. Personally, I hate how things come easily to me. Especially knowledge. Not needing to work for it devalues it. I can learn quickly and this learning requires little thought. I do not have to work as hard as others so my accomplishes feel hollow. I suppose the true problem is apathy though. I have no need to pursue, so I become apathetic.

2.) You should see my city. It looks to be thriving, vibrant, and living, but thats only on the surface. Look in the dark places, look where the sun, proverbial or true, doesn't shine. You won't find life, but you won't find death either. You will find a hollow center, a place without purpose.

We act as though we live but we really just watch as the things we love are devalued through our inefficiency and apathy.

3.) I was born the eldest of two on April 3, 1990.

My brother was born two years later, and from that moment on, we've fought. We were never really physical, but oh, how we yelled. My parents, of course, hated our fighting; they were loving parents that tried their best to instill their values in their children. We were to ask before doing, don't ask for anything stupid, and above all, don't do anything stupid.
But most of our values came from the church. We went to church every Sunday, and when I could, every Wednesday for youth group. We were a religious family, and I had no problem with that.

But there was always the expectation to do well. In school, with church, and life in general, I was supposed to do well. It came from always doing well; my parents just assumed that that always also meant always will. Sometimes, there just wasn't any relaxation, you just had to keep going. "Chew faster", don't chew less, and thats part of my blessing and curse.
Do it all, do it well, and enjoy it. That was life.

4.) I was not a particularly active or social child in my youth. There were a few really good friends but not exactly a lot of them. I remember one friend named Andrew Tuttle (we called him Turtle) and we spent hours "mining". We would go to the hard packed earth wall on the playground and very carefully scrape away at the dirt, forming small piles of extremely fine sand. That was the whole goal, just to make little piles of fine sand from dirt. Oh, the hours we spent, chipping away at the rock, just for the pointless entertainment of a fourth grader.

5.) My father was a man who could laugh and be serious, somehow at the same time. He was really my inspiration to be an engineer. Thats where it all started. The man could design anything (at least, thats what I saw). I loved to see the drawings, and when I was young, I colored them.

As I got older I began asking my father for help in my engineering projects and for help with math. It was then that he showed me a brilliant way of learning. He shut up. He let me figure it out by rambling and basically talking to myself. He would contribute at times, but mostly he would let me figure it out.

I realized that my dad was either extremely stupid (and didn't know anything I was learning) or brilliant and just wanted me to figure it out. And considering that he has a very stable job at an engineering firm, I would consider the latter as more likely. And that is a pretty cool thought.