Alden Rathburn

The kid and the machine had squared off against each other for the prescribed twelve years.

Our educational system, as a practical measure, is focused mostly on STEM and the Humanities. It doesn’t embrace visual arts in the way students like Alden Rathburn need.

Alden’s about to enter a college that will level the playing field. It’ll be as demanding as any university but with requisites geared to students with exceptional artistic and creative abilities.

Alden will say goodbye to his high-school, artist-in-residence status and begin pulling all-nighters to compete among his peers. He’ll face the four-steps-forward, three-steps-back realities required to excel.

Since early on he’s been creating videos, often following a tribe of local skateboarders of which he’s a charter member.

As a large man, as a skateboarder with militantly red hair, he represents the kind of motley menace parents used to warn about until “ollies,” “kickflips” and “grinds” captured the entire world’s imagination at the Tokyo Olympics.

The countdown is on.

There is one discipline Alden would like to explore that isn’t listed anywhere in his four-year syllabus but that may be as important as any of the others.

“I want to learn to take risks,” he says.