I don’t think I fully realized how much growing up at Girard College shaped me until I became a writer.
There was something strangely cinematic about the experience itself. A historic boarding school in Philadelphia filled with massive buildings, long hallways, traditions, complicated history, and kids all trying to figure out who they were while growing up away from home. Looking back now, it honestly feels like the setting of a television series.
When you spend ten years in an environment like that, it changes how you observe people. You notice social dynamics differently. Friendships become deeper. Isolation feels heavier. Small moments become unforgettable memories because you’re essentially growing up together inside this contained world.
At the same time, Girard’s history also carried larger conversations about race, access, identity, and exclusion. Even as kids, you could feel that history living underneath the surface whether you fully understood it or not.
I think that’s part of why so many of the stories I write now involve hidden systems, buried truths, outsiders, and people trying to understand where they fit in worlds that weren’t necessarily designed for them.
Whether I’m writing sci-fi, thrillers, horror, or historical drama, I’m usually exploring characters caught between identities or searching for truth underneath institutions and power structures. That absolutely connects back to my experiences growing up there.
Even the atmosphere of some of my stories probably comes from those memories — the feeling of mystery, history, loneliness, friendship, survival, and emotional intensity all existing in the same space.
As writers, we spend so much time trying to “find our voice,” but sometimes your voice has been forming around you since childhood.
Leave a Reply