--- title: "NOX Writing — Paper Airplane Contest" version: "1.5" date: "2025-10-15" tags: [feature, health-and-human-performance, journalism-school, paper-airplane-contest] ---
It’s Wednesday. There’s a holiday at work on Friday.
Today was the paper‑airplane competition — between the college that employs me now and the one that raised me: Journalism.
It was hard to show up. I try to be social — say hi, stand near people — and it still feels foreign. I’ve always been an outsider. But I’m also new. Fuel on fire.
I feel like I don’t belong here. I feel like I don’t belong anywhere.
It feels too easy to count the things I’ve done with my life:
a house and a car, a few cameras, a dozen hard drives —
and a wife 151 miles away.
I went second for our college.
In front of maybe a hundred people — and judges who've been immortalized in plaques and statues at the giant stadium next door.
Across from me sat my former journalism professor: Pulitzer juror, expert witness in free‑speech trials — a room made of people who *won* at life.
And me — just some guy who used to be good at sports, a former athlete who got in trouble in school — now sitting in the Florida Gym, surrounded by this many people, and just so profoundly sad and alone.It’s tough being new.
It’s too easy to hear the voice whisper:
“No one likes you.”
“They don’t want you here.”
“Why is *he* even around — taking up space?”
“He didn’t go very far. And neither did his plane.”
Later, walking the campus halls, I heard a voice behind me:
“You’ve got quite an arm there.”
“The coach saw it. He said, *there’s an arm*.”
A Heisman Trophy winner noticed something I was trying so hard to show.
Just a flicker of recognition — a ping on the radar — right as I’m starting to feel myself disappear.