I'm basically a total fucking loser. I was one of the top three students of my graduating high school class, along with my Korean best friend who was number two and some guy who was number one. I had a raftload of impressive academic credentials for a high school student from the "backwater" state of Georgia, including State Alternate for the Governor's Honors program, a residential summer enrichment program for gifted students. That means in tenth grade, only two other people in the state of Georgia outperformed me (likely both were older than me) for applying to the program in a specific subject area and had one of them failed to be able to participate, I would have taken their place. I achieved that placement after somewhat flippantly choosing some subject or other (maybe journalism) as my area of interest because unlike most of the other gifted kids in my school, I didn't have some stand-out area of strength. I was someone doing well overall and it was essen...