“Lets make this interesting”, Justin jokes handing me a Twizzler when we start the interview. After two failed attempts at hunt for a time to have an interview with Justin I had finally gotten him to sit down and talk to me about his life. Justin Howell, I consider one of my closest friends, but at the same time he is different personality than I am. Unlike most of my friends who very closely fit the nerd status, he is nothing of the sort. His refreshing spirit has an impact on everyone he meets in his day to day life. He lives his live to the fullest, which can easily be see by how hard it was to find him and sit him down at the airport for this interview.
“So what you want to know”, he asks as he stands up and begins to walk about the room, and looking out the window at the planes taking off.
“Everything”, I say jokingly. Immediately he starts into a graphic description of how his live started, including conception and birth. Both of which I refuse to include in this paper. After the joke is over, he starts to talk about his family. Justin like his mother and youngest sister are very outgoing and bubbly people. While on the other side of the coin, his next oldest sister and father are very mellow and introverted. While he says he loves them all very much, he identifies with his sister and mother much more than he does the older sister and father. He says that many teachers at Andrews Academy have even told her that teaching her is like teaching Justin. By the way he makes that claim, I can tell he is very proud of his sister.
Next I ask him about his activities he has been in over the years. Like setting the fuse off on a bomb, Justin starts to ramble off a long list of positions and activities he done. He was in band in high-school for all four years, over which time he perfected his skills on the trombone, baritone, trumpet, clarinet, piano and even the harmonica. He proudly shows gives hand gestures on how he plays each one including a very humorous tuba impression. He goes on to talk about his experience in Kaleidoscope, a video yearbook extracurricular activity. Like band and everything else he did during high-school he was in it all four years, also boastfully pointing out that I was only in it for three. While he was Kaleidoscope he acted as both video editor and “dictator” (director). “Under my watch we always got the video done in time”, he said.
Moving down the list of things he does is flying, the love of his college life. He estimates he has spends one third of his life has he puts it “living” at the Andrews University airport. He goes on to say that while most people think he spends that much time flying, he spends most of his time in classes on aviation. He wishes he could spend more time flying but “school comes first”. I ask him how safe he feels flying hundreds of feet above the hard earth, and quickly spews off the normal statistics that you are safer flying than driving. Followed by saying, “If you die then you die... I really don’t care, but not in an emo way.”
When asking him what he likes, Justin easily lists starts to list off, but I interrupt him before he could finish and interject “Top 3”. This appears to throw him into a quandary, as he sits there racking his brain for which ones he likes the most. After about a minute of seemingly torturous discussions, he almost has three top items. I add that, “could they be in order”. Glaring at me, in disbelieve he lets out a grown and after another few minutes of thought presents his list. “Women, food, football, Nascar, airplanes.” he says and begins an attempt to convince me food, football and Nascar are on the save level. While I found it funny that he could make such a simple choice between things, it helped reveal some characteristics of what make him who he is.