I had a friend in high school named Jaime – one of the smartest kids in class, funny, a little dorky, but genuine. I sort of lost touch with him after we graduated. There were a couple phone calls over the years, but not much else.

This summer, while sitting at work bored out of my skull, I decided to run a search for him over the Internet. Found out he’s now with one of the top, cutting-edge computer gaming companies in the world and is a lead programmer on Halo, one of the most anticipated games of the last few years. He’s sort of a celebrity in the gaming world.

I also had a friend named Carrie. We lived in the same neighborhood, and went out together once or twice. She had a sly smile and a mischievous streak. This past weekend a couple of old buddies told me she’s unemployed and living with a guy who isn’t the father of her child.

High school doesn’t seem that long ago. For me, it’s a bit further away than it is for most of us, but I’m 23 and graduated high school in 1995. But when you hear about people you once were close to and where they are now, you wonder how life’s paths could have diverged so sharply in such a relatively short time.

Back in 11th grade, none of us knew where we were going. We could sort of guess about the others, like the star football player. We just knew he was going to find fame on a college gridiron somewhere.

Except the college football star from my time in high school is pulling a bid in Statesville on drug charges right now.

And we all secretly believed the quiet, introverted kid in the corner wasn’t going to make much out of himself. He’s designing space shuttle engines now.

Me and my two buddies related the outcome of every person we could think of and knew about. Sometimes there were surprises and sometimes there weren’t. But as I sat there telling them about this guy Julius who went on to become a model for black men’s hair products, I stopped.

“I wonder what everyone’s saying about us?” I asked them.

One of them is working in a factory for Ford right now. The other is finishing his college degree at home because his girlfriend will deliver their daughter in November. And I’m here as a fourth-year junior.

Did I think I’d be here now? No. Did others? I don’t know. But I know there’s people out there, people I sat next to in history or English or algebra, who are saying, “Hey, did you hear about Matt Neistein?”

Ninety-five percent of the students here at Eastern are between the ages of 18 and 22. For some, high school was last spring. For me, it was six years ago. It doesn’t matter, though, because we all start making tracks the minute we get that diploma.

We become stories of success and lessons in failure. We become famous or we fade into the crowd. People will know and people will remember.

Many of us think what we do and where are lives are going right now doesn’t matter much in the big picture. I know writing this column isn’t going to move the Earth. Jaime’s career probably won’t revolutionize the world as we know it.

But it will get him a phone call from an old friend who wants to tell him congratulations, and for most of us, that’s pretty damn good.

Matt Neistein is a junior journalism major and a biweekly columnist for The Daily Eastern News. His e-mail address is [email protected]. Columns are the opinion of the author.