2. Analysis

Again, I am choosing to draw back on material I wrote last year because last year the final piece I wrote for school was a personal internal analysis on how I believe I operate. I thought it might be valuable for any readers to have this, in order to be able to understand me better as a person and a writer. The context of this writing assignment was to be an OP, a quarterly paper we would write and then read to the class. The only characteristic of an OP was only that it had to be about a topic we were currently dealing with.

A Look at Drew Sylvester

I’m not quite sure how I appear to others, but I feel like often times I am perceived as an awkward and shy guy. While this notion certainly has merit, it is my belief that it’s not entirely true. There’s more to the story than just being shy. I am without a doubt reserved, but I’m not reserved because I don’t like talking and/or have nothing to say. In fact the opposite is true. I love talking and I have everything to say. My introverted character hinges on the fact that I don’t enjoy carrying on random and trivial conversations. I like having a purpose in what I say. Compounding this fact, is the added effect of having too much to say. Whether that surprises some of you or not, I don’t know, but it’s true. I internalize everything I observe and therefore have a lot to discuss.

I would estimate that I probably only communicate about 2% of what I have to say on a daily basis. Everything else I just internalize. Part of the reason for this is simply because I’m not presented with the opportunity to discuss what I want and I don’t like spontaneously bringing up topics. It’s just not how my character works. I work very systematically, and don’t like making random jumps out of my line. The other part of this problem is simply that I don’t know how to verbalize everything that I think. Even as an example of this, I am having difficulty trying to vocalize the problem I face in a manner that is understandable to all of you right now.

Once again I’ll split up this specific problem into two underlying factors. The first of which is the easier to understand. My family consists of 6 members: my parents, my older sister, my older brother, my younger sister, and myself. Out of my siblings, my older sister and I are the most similar, while my brother and younger sister are similar in their temperaments. As I described to Ms. Volksen in the first assignment of the year, my brother’s character plays a vital role in defining who I am. Jared is an incredibly outgoing, talkative and fun person to be around. I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t enjoy being around my brother, apart from teachers that is (although even they like his personality, just not what they see as his disruptiveness). Jared is basically my opposite: he is absolutely comfortable around others, can talk easily, and is naturally athletic (among other things). The fact that he is my opposite is what I’m getting at though. He is my opposite because that is what I allowed. I am not an assertive person, so when I was born into my family I simply filled the role that was open, rather than competing with my brother. This involved me becoming the listener and observer; a role that I still fill today, within my family, and within life in general. As I expressed in my paper earlier this year, I am not in the least disappointed with this role, I love who I am. Nor am I expressing resentment towards my brother for pushing me into this role. I love my brother, and he is the person I have looked up to most my whole life. This is just part of the explanation for why I am who I am.

As I said previously, my difficulty in verbalizing ideas is due to two factors, the second of which is the more difficult to explain. I have limitless thoughts floating around in my mind, but when it comes time to express them, I fall short. It seems to me in retrospect, as if the English language doesn’t suffice. Which seems absurd to say, but it’s the closest description I can come to. For those of you who have read the Eragon books by Christopher Paolini, I feel as if my mind would be much better suited to the type of communication Eragon and his dragon have, one in which words aren’t essential, but where emotions, feelings and images are shared via their thoughts. Thus, the entire thought is communicated, not just fragments, which is what seems to happen to me. Everything I try to say is infinitely better in my mind. The general scenario involved with my difficulty is that as I try to communicate my ideas, I grasp for the ideas and only end up holding on to a portion of the original thought. Despite the risk of seeming even crazier than I probably already sound, I’ll throw in this final example. Within the confines of my own mind I probably engage in 10-30 monologue discussions on a daily basis. Just to clarify, I’m not like a mad scientist. I would describe it as more of a computer playing through possible scenarios of an event. In my case, I will usually run through certain events in my life, whether from that day, perceived future events, or past events, and play through what are virtually what-if situations. They almost always involve me changing what I said, and playing through what the conversation might have looked like, or more often than not, saying something instead of nothing at all and then playing out the rest of the situation.

Somehow, this OP ended up a lot stranger than I originally intended, but that virtually proves my whole argument: I can’t communicate as well as I would want to. Hopefully, you were able to follow my path well enough to make sense of what I said. My intent for this OP was to clear up possible misconceptions of who I am, and how I operate, so to speak. We only have one year left together, and I don’t want to walk away from all of our time together misunderstood.

1. Prologue

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door," he used to say. "You step onto the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to."
-Bilbo Baggins (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings, J.RR. Tolkien)


Everything must have a beginning. A simple enough premise to be sure, but one which has many and vast applications. In regards to this particular product, it would seem most logical to begin with an account of who I am what my background is. All literary works include an "About the Author" section, in accordance with the basic principle that, for readers to better understand the subject matter, they must first understand what the author's personal disposition towards life in general is. Therefore, I will strive to do the same, and will attempt to be as brief as possible in this entry. As my future writings will follow me on a personal level, it seems suitable to provide a background on a wider spectrum of my adolescence. Providing a complete biography of my life is unrealistic, rather my goal is to highlight key events/circumstances/relationships that I believe truly defined my growing up. It is fairly lengthy, but I tried my best to keep this post within manageable reading size. Please just bear in mind the difficulty of summarizing 18 years of one's life in a matter of a few paragraphs. And so we go....


I was born into a family of 6: my parents, my oldest sister, my brother, myself, and my younger sister. In school years, my siblings and I are all separated by precisely three years; a fact that has allowed each of us to grow in countless ways. As a result of the age separation, each of us, at some point or another, had two other siblings at elementary school with us, attended middle school by ourselves, and was/is/will be a freshmen in high school and college, while the next oldest sibling is a senior in the same school. As I commented earlier, this simple fact allowed each of us to develop our personalities, friend groups and academic status, unhindered by the other siblings. 


Age-wise my family descends in this order: my dad, my mom, Melissa, Jared, myself, and Abbey.   At first thought, I can brainstorm a minimum of three ways in which my family family can be divided, in terms of similar personality traits that is. Within the sect of the siblings specifically, there are also three major distinguishing similarities, that can be used to separate us. First is the age divide. Between Jared and me, there exists a metaphorical gap of time that pushes Melissa and Jared close together, and Abbey and me together. By this I mean that, Melissa and Jared grew up together in almost an entirely different generation, in which they lived in a different home, my parents had different jobs than currently, and culturally there have been significant changes in technology, movies, t.v., and music between the two of our "sects." It is fairly safe to say that personality-wise, though, Melissa and I possess the closest traits and or values, while Jared and Abbey are closer to each other in this area (the second divisor). Together, Melissa and I place a higher value on academic skill, (our most important shared skill encompasses literature (e.g. reading in general)) whereas Jared and Abbey place a higher value on athletic skill (although recently Abbey has proven herself to possess more of an equal balance of the two skills). Consequently, it is generally Melissa and I who bring home the quality grades (although, again, Abbey is currently nipping at my heels in regards to academics), and who hold conversations over books, history, movies, etc., while Jared and Abbey can most often be found at sports events, with their friends, or with friends, participating in random sports activities. Finally, the third way in which my siblings and I can be divided up, is through the similarities in the ways we view the character of God. This may, perhaps, be the most blurred of the lines though, as Abbey is still young enough that her views are still being molded to a much higher degree than the rest of us. In spite of this, it seems reasonable to me to place Jared and I in one spectrum, and Melissa and Abbey in another. Whereas for Jared and I, the theological aspect of the Christian faith is almost entirely supplementary, for Abbey, and especially Melissa, theology is one of the more attractive pursuits within the Faith.


These imaginary dividing lines have played a huge role in all four of our lives in that the lines have largely determined which siblings we have spent most of our time with. Most significantly, the crucial line has been the "age gap line," as it makes the most physical sense, in that our ages determine where we go to school, and who we see at school. Therefore, Abbey, and even myself, were hardly around Melissa while she attended school. This was compounded by the fact that she left for college, while Abbey was in elementary school, and I was in middle school. Despite Jared and I only being between three to four years apart in age, historically Jared and I have had the least interaction with each other. One might initially guess that Melissa and Abbey would have that sense of a distant relationship, but rather than shy away from a much younger sister, Melissa took on the role of what is essentially a second mother for the family, and specifically for Abbey. 


For Jared and I, our relationship has been characterized by the early establishment of not understanding each other. While Jared is the athletic type, I am the academic type. Where Jared can instantly be the center of attention, I stick to the outskirts of the group. It is one of my personal beliefs that, while I was certainly born with specific traits, those traits received their largest developments through the fact that most of them are in opposition to Jared's traits. Largely helped along by my ever-present "filler" role, in which I assume whatever role is left open for me to fill (if I'm with people who need a leader I become a leader. If I'm with someone who needs to be listened to, I listen. If someone needs somebody to be talk to, I am there.), my traits of being patient, a good listener, a good thinker/analyzer, and possessing a good memory developed stronger than they would have otherwise. Growing up within a family where Jared's role as the entertainer, and his general nature for being the center of attention were already established, I naturally slipped into place as the listener, as there wasn't really "room" for me to talk. Because I couldn't talk at the first demand of my mind, my ability for endurance and patience increased over time. Additionally, as time progressed, and I would take in more and more information, it would fall to me to remember certain details, thus building up my memory, as well as providing me opportunities on my own to sift through the things gathered up inside me, and to find solutions or answers to the potential problems. Clearly, I have grossly exaggerated all of these claims; none of this happened consciously, nor was I confined to existing amongst a family who didn't let me speak, nor was Jared always existing as the source of entertainment, or sole speaker. Rather these are gross generalizations, that were often true and helped establish me as a person.


As a result of Jared and I not truly understanding each other, we have always, for the most part, shied away from each other. During his middle school and high school years, Jared spent little time at home, owing mostly to his commitments to sports, as well as his love for spending time with his close friends (of which he had many). Through the entirety of Jared's senior year, and my freshmen year, the times I spoke more than a simple greeting of, "Hi, how are you?" to Jared could probably be counted using just my fingers. Despite this seemingly poor brotherly relationship, Jared and I have progressed greatly these past three years, culminating in this past month, after Jared's surgery, with him telling me that I am currently his best friend; an incredible, and meaningful praise I never expected to hear from him, even 6 months ago. The transformation that took place is a topic I plan on discussing within another post. But first, let's jump to a different thread in this web I am weaving.

From the time I was around three years old, I've understood the fact that I have "flaws," largely because I struggled with an anger problem for years. In my early years (up until about 2nd grade) hardly ever was there true substance for my anger outbursts (which typically involved physical aggression), but during elementary school, my anger stemmed largely from the instigation of my brother, Jared. Often times, situations were manipulated by Jared in order for me to "break," get angry, and then get in trouble, but other times I would snap, only as a result of typical brotherly battles (such as Jared claiming ownership, or first dibs on an item, because he was older). Whatever the case though, I almost always responded poorly. On one occasion, my anger resulted in swinging a baseball bat at Jared's head, knocking him out. One other outburst (probably my worst outburst, that I can at least remember) involved me drawing blood from Jared, as I bit his neck, in defense of my turn on the trampoline. Reflecting on that moment today, it is absolutely ludicrous that, that was my first reaction to losing my turn on a trampoline of all things. 

I share these experiences, not so that I can appear as a crazy psycho, but so that people can understand where I come from as an individual. I will extend my previous anger explanation further, by sharing that at one point I was pushed into visiting with an anger management counselor/psychologist, I believe at least once a week, in order to battle my anger problem. However, as best as I can recall, the sessions only served to aggravate me even more, until my parents pulled me out of the sessions. That fact is quite possibly one of the least known facts about my life, and is even one that I hardly remember. 

I cannot point to one specific moment, week, month or year when my rage issue ceased to be a problem, but rather, it was a gradual process. Though I don't know exactly how it happened either, I am led to believe that it occurred mostly as a result of the social aspect. Owing to an early understanding that anger is not morally, or socially correct, I put on a "show" while at school. Not once, do I remember having an outburst while at any school; I simply hid that part of my character from people, in order to fit in appropriately. Therefore, I believe that, that part of my life, in which I hid and chose to bury my anger, carried over to every part of my life, finally reaching  the point, where I feel confident in saying that, currently, anger is probably the emotion I show the least. However, while that may be true, I also believe that rather than this issue simply disappearing, it was transferred into another problematic area; namely, withdrawing into myself. Pause this branch thread for a moment again , though, as I pick up another thread.

My family moved to Upper Arlington in around 1998, the same year I entered kindergarten. Thus, once I finish this school year, making me the first of my family to venture all the way through the  UA school system. It was in kindergarten, however, that I established myself in a friend group of five individuals: Aaron Patrick, Ben Ross, Ryan Daughters, Will Seymour, and myself. The five of us traveled through elementary school together, racking up the memories as young boys will, and sticking together through thick and thin, until at the end of fourth grade, Aaron moved down to Georgia. Though the rest of us still remained friends, Aaron's move "rocked the boat" of all of our friendships, and, to an extent, assisted in creating two, maybe three, distinct groups out of the remaining four of us. Here is what I mean by that: while the four of us still hung out quite often, Will began spending more time with some of the other friends he had maintained over the course of the years, while Ryan and Ben solidified their friendships with a few of their neighbors, thus leaving me to drift between the groups, and build up my own personal identity. This, I did mainly by establishing myself in video games. 


Since kindergarten I have owned a video game console. While no one is truly "good" at video games the first time they ever hold a controller, I would venture to say that I picked it up faster than most do. Patience, perseverance, and logic are three of my strongest personality traits; all of which are necessary to develop one's skills at video games. To avoid going into lengthy details of all my video game exploits from the age of 6 to 12, I will simply say that I "honed" my skill and ability to play a wide range of video games during that time period. Assisting me in this process was the fact that I spent a large portion of my time alone, partly out of my own desire (do my previous explanations (family dynamics and anger issues) make sense now?), and partly as a result of my involvement in "both groups" of my core friends (it's not entirely true to say that we were really split, it was more of an unseen split). One of the biggest downfalls of having multiple groups of friends is that, often, the other groups will assume that the person in between the groups is already doing something, consequently leaving them out.


At the end of 7th grade, and entering 8th grade, however, things shifted again. At that point, I switched from owning a Nintendo Gamecube to an Xbox, at which point I discovered the popular game Halo (and Halo 2). Furthermore, the used Xbox I bought came with a Xbox live account, which was still active. Combined, these two factors pushed me into the biggest addiction of my life. All of my skills as a video game player, and analytical thinker came out during my time playing online Halo; I loved every moment of it. Halo seemed/seems more, or at least on equal footing, with any competitive sport played today. Every skill utilized on a typical sport playing field is used while playing Halo: reaction time, hand-eye coordination, quickness, teamwork, communication, strategic placements, and general knowledge of how things work inside the game. To a greater extent even, Halo has the added factor over other sports, in that weapons have specific "spawn times" that every player must know, and keep track of in game, as well as knowing Halo specific language, such as player callouts and lingo. Examples include such sentences as (spewed out at a high rate, amidst the constant other callouts of the other teammates), "one-shot, red runway, with snipes," indicating that there is one enemy who has control of a sniper at the location known as "red runway" ("red" indicating the color of the opposing team, and, consequently, the side that team started the game on is known as red side) who requires only one more shot to be landed on him before he dies. The reason I am explaining this aspect of gaming, knowing full well that this makes little sense to most of the potential readers of this, is to, hopefully, help individuals understand the caliber of skill that goes into playing such games. Truthfully, though, it wasn't until the release of Halo 3 during my freshmen year that I really joined into the realm of competitive gaming, as I started playing Halo about four years after its first release, and was forced to fight over a huge experience gap between myself and the "veterans" in Halo 2. However, in Halo 3, I started fresh with everyone, and after just a brief first few months, was ranking highly amongst the world. 


At that point though, Halo came to run my life. It was, generally, what my friends and I would do, while together. It was what I talked about most with others, and what they talked about most with me. And as much as I don't want to attribute my grade point average dropping from a typical 3.8-4.0 range to below a 3.0 for the first time ever, my time spent on Halo is on of the primary culprits. The true catalyst for my obsession with this game, though, came from the simple fact that I had finally found that one thing, that I was good at. I've always been "smart" (mostly due to my reading capabilities),  but I don't (generally) enjoy putting the time into developing my intelligence. However, with Halo, that was different. Since physical athletics have never been my strong suit either, finally finding a hobby, with which I could spend my time and energy, caused a feeling of a sort of contentment. I felt as if I was entitled to be good at something (that I actually enjoyed), and that I should thus put all my efforts into said task. Three years down the road though, I had a complete reversal of thinking. 


Christianity, the religion, is about as natural to me as eating food. With both parents being "Christians," my life from the beginning has always had a heavy Christian atmosphere surrounding it. Church, to me, was something everyone did- just like school, eating food, and going to the restroom. Not until around the age of six did it truly occur to me that going to church was something only certain families did, and even more, only certain individuals did. Despite that knowledge, I continued going to church, mostly because the majority of the people I knew at that time also attended the same church. and some degree because I had understood the basic Church taught principle that I had done some bad things already in my life, and because of that "God," the Thing, I was told, that made me and ran the Universe, couldn't be with me, despite the fact that He loved me. However, the Church also told me about how Jesus Christ, God's son, was born in order to die, so that God could look past my wrongdoings. And the only thing I had to do, for God to be with me, was to become a Christian. To me, that meant continuing going to Church; so I did.


Again, to avoid extremely lengthy details, just know that from about the age of six until the summer before my freshmen year of high school, that was the attitude I possessed in regards to Christianity; simply that, for me to be a "Christian," church attendance was needed, talking about God to people was required, and reading the Bible and praying were additives that made one a "better" Christian. All of this existed on a much more subconscious level, but was exemplified by how I lived my average day. Not until the start of my freshmen year was the whole Christianity thing explained to me in such a way that I realized it not only called me believe in the existence of a omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal God, who also existed in the human form of Jesus Christ, the God-man who chose to die, in order to assume the punishment for the worlds' sin, all for love's sake, but also that, in light of these facts, every aspect of my life deserved to be put into submission to this God. Even after understanding this misleadingly basic truth, though, I struggled to put it into practice. Consequently, my high school career has primarily consisted of a power struggle between those things which I want to do, and those things which I know I ought to do. In general, though, that statement isn't really special, as it is true for a lot of high schoolers; the difference lies mostly within where/who the standards for what is good and what isn't comes from. For myself those standards exist as a result of God's interactions with man, left behind in writing contained in the Bible. Currently, that is the point at which I exist: my life is grounded in the truths taught by the Bible, but this does not mean that I perfectly follow through with everything found there.


In quick summarization, here is the basic umbrella style format for my life:
1. At the roots of my nature there exist the tendencies for listening, patience, analyzing, and memorizing; all skills expounded upon by my interactions within my family.
2. As a second head branch, I possessed a gross habit of outbursts of anger, which over time transformed into a habit of spending time dwelling inside my own thoughts.
3. The first connection piece to come into play, is the fact that I was in a group of 5 best friends, that over time developed into multiple groups, of which I was in multiple, consequently leading to more time devoted to remaining by myself. A task which extrapolated both skill set, and tendency to remain alone.
4. Extending from this idea, came a rapidly progressing obsession with video games, finally climaxing with my immersion in the Halo series.
5. Recently, however, my addiction to video games was broken by a relatively new understanding of the childhood religion I was part of, thus leading to a current lifestyle, in which my aim is to live in accordance with the standards laid out for me by the God of the Christian faith.


Now that all of this has been established, and the basic facts of who I am and what background I come from have been uncovered, I feel comfortable diving into the past several months, as they contain possibly the most radical shifts in my life to date.