Ross School seniors have a unique opportunity: they get to spend their last year of high school focusing on a personal passion. We embark on a “Senior Project” – something that we’ve been thinking about and planning for since we started high school.
Cars have been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. In fact, if you ask my parents, they’ll say I’ve been pointing at cars and trucks since before I could speak. As a kid, my room was filled with Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars, my shirts, sheets and walls were covered in cars and trucks, and I would only read books and watch videos with automotive themes. My first car was a battery operated Fisher Price Jeep that I drove endlessly around the backyard, navigating between the orange cones that my parents had cheerfully put out for me.
As I got older, my tastes matured, but my passion remained. I started watching the British TV show “Top Gear,” going to the Auto Show at the Javits center every year, playing driving simulators on my Playstation, and challenging myself to identify any car on the road, type and model, at a single glance.
During my freshman year of high school, I spent three weeks interning at Joe’s Garage in Southampton, under the mentorship of Joe Frizell, the owner. I took my passion one step further by getting to learn about the insides of a car, as well as the outsides. That was the first time it occurred to me that I might, one day, restore a classic car… perhaps even for my Senior Project. I started saving up birthday gifts, and later paychecks from various jobs, and over the course of the past four years, finally accumulated the funds to purchase a fixer-upper.
So here I am, on the brink of my ultimate year of high school, and on the threshold of fulfilling a long-held dream. Now to find the car.