Dear Malcolm, My name is Bradford Absher, and Im from North Wilkesboro.

It is a small town about thirty minutes east of Boone. Besides living in Boone when my mom finished her undergraduate degree in English from Appalachian State, and a few years in Lewisville, a suburb of Winston Salem, I have lived there my whole life. A lot of people at my high school, Wilkes Central, would complain about living in a small town, saying the same things over again about how it sucked, and there was never anything to do, but I feel like those people would always find something to complain about. Living in a small town is not my ideal preference, but I like it fine. There were always great views just driving around town, and never any traffic jams, and lots of backwoods mountain roads that were great to run on during cross country practice. I doubt I would have enjoyed running cross country at a Charlotte high school, since the practice would have to be in relatively flat parks. We have two miniature donkeys, and two dogs. The donkeys names are Henry and Jane, and they live in three acres of woods behind our house. They dont really do anything productive; we got them as pets. They just kind of walk around and eat grass, and they stare at you until you bring them carrots or something. We got our first dog, Zeke, almost ten years ago. He is Australian Shepherd mix; we picked him up from the animal shelter or pound. Nowadays, Zeke kind of seems like a paranoid old man and feels the need to bark at anything approaching our house, except at us. He even barks at cars that he thinks are going too slow down the road. Our other dog, Bill, is a black lab mix. We found him wandering down the road two years ago when he was a puppy. He was starving to the point where his belly was bloated. Around a month after we took him in, we discovered he had hip dysplasia, so we got him a couple of surgeries, and now he can now run and jump as good as other dogs, although his growth is stunted. Right now I am a political science major, but I am in doubt I will stick with that. I consider myself undecided, but for some reason I put political science as my major on my application. I am glad I did that though because I was able to be a member in HPIA learning community. I cant say what I will major in or what career I will pursue, but I do have an idea. Working for the State Departments foreign service, an NGO like Human Rights Watch, or an overseas bureau for a paper like the Washington Post all appeal to me. I dont read nearly as much as I should. Although I would have to say my favorite author is the late Christopher Hitchens. His decisive rhetoric on topics like religion extremism provides such an articulately brilliant perspective. The fact that Hitchens was never afraid to take an unpopular stance has always appealed to me. My favorite work by him is his Amazon e-book, The Enemy, which was Hitchenss obituary for Osama Bin-Laden. My favorite novels are Ray Bradburys Fahrenheit 451, and Douglas Adamss The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. From, Bradford