I was a little nervous about Fred. Fred was my partner for week IV. Fred is... motivated. Fred is... wired. I thought Fred was... uncontrollable. But, turns out, Fred is pretty normal -- he's just normal at twice the speed of a regular person.

We hit it off great. I, not exactly known for for catatonic-level calmness, found myself saying "Fred... relax Fred. Breath in. Breath out. Ahhhh. Good Fred. Now, what were we working on?". This was pretty bizarre for me. He simply cannot be still. My own mother, long the benchmark for "can't sit still" in my book, does not hold a candle to Fred. Guinness, is there a world record for this?

But, he's really quite well organized, takes great notes in class, has a fabulous sense of humor and a wonderful diversity of life-experiences.

We'll work on the relaxation part.

Update: ~7/22/04 -- Fred Has Left the Building. A day or so before our final exams, I happened upon Fred in the Men's changeroom. He said casually "see you around", or something like that. "What do you mean, Fred". "I'm headed home" (Spokane, Washington). With that, we parted company. Fred never said goodbye to the majority of our classmates. He didn't take the final exam (he'd calculated that he'd still have a passing grade without it -- true for most of us). He just... left. Its paradoxical. Its Fred. Really interesting fellow, but definitely his own person. We missed him at the graduation -- for me, the grad provided closure on the experience: "we're done".

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