Back in May 2007, I was a relatively stress-free Senior in high school who had already accepted a place at Skidmore College, was desperately looking forward to graduating, and not so much desperately looking forward to the AP exams. While just a few months ago, my friends and I were frantically answering college application essay prompts, or hysterically trying to boost our GPA’s at the eleventh hour, now we leisurely sat around the common area, some of us sleeping across rolling chairs and others at computers hacking into blocked websites like Facebook and YouTube. Ahhh…those were the days.

I was one of the hooligans breaking into YouTube. At first, it was for David Choi, who at the time I thought was my destiny. His determination to never crack a smile as he crooned his original songs was (to my artsy, emo, indie soul) just oh-so-dreamy. But somehow, I fell down that YouTube rabbit hole and stumbled across someone named ricebunny (better known as Michelle Phan).