For my last two years of high school I attended the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM), located in Durham, NC. This is a public, residential high school for kids interested in the STEM fields, and was created by Governor Jim Hunt to provide a higher level of education for those students than they may have received at their home high schools.

I had some of the highest highs in my life while going there, as well as some of the lowest lows. In part it was because I was a teenager and that is what happens when you are a teenager, but a few were because of the unique nature of NCSSM.

I was recently reminded of a trauma I experienced early into my stay at the school. It was triggered by a guy named Paul Namaste, who sent out an alumni survey, I assume, to everyone who ever attended the school.

When I got the first e-mail, I clicked on the link and started the survey, but it was very long and detailed and I really didn’t have time to fill it out. This is an extremely busy time of the year for me, and I assume it is the same for other people as well.

But that didn’t stop ol’ Paul from reminding me about it. Again, and again.

After about the fourth e-mail I marked his stuff as spam, so I missed the next few pleas to fill out the survey. However, this evening I went into my spam folder looking for a missing hotel folio so I could complete an expense report, and there was a new one entitled “If you fill out your NCSSM Alumni Survey, you will stop getting these messages ;)”

Seriously?

Who in the hell thinks it’s okay to do this, spam people, and then put a little wink emoticon at the end?

It reminded me of an incident that happened at the School in the autumn of 1982.

We had only been at the campus about two months when a notice went up on the bulletin board (we didn’t have any sort of school-wide e-mail back then) about a survey. We were in the third class to ever attend NCSSM and there were people who wanted to, basically, experiment on us. Some of that experimentation was through surveys, and since this one said it was voluntary I decided to skip. It was also at 9pm the night before the PSAT exam.

As some of my classmates were leaving the dorm to go to the test, they asked why I wasn’t going. I pointed out that it was optional, but they told me that they had been told it wasn’t. In any case I was having fun talking with a friend of mine in my room. He was a senior and thus exempt from the meeting.

At some point in time a knock came at the door. I looked at my buddy, he looked at me, and I decided to hide in the closet (grin). It was the Resident Advisor (RA) and it didn’t take him long to find me and force me to go to fill out the survey.

The cafeteria, where this was being held, was pretty full (my class had over 200 students). Some were in pajamas and some looked like they had just been woken up (remember that an important test was being held the next morning).

The survey was full of a lot of questions like “how many times a day do you feel sad?” and even “how many times a day do you go to the bathroom?”. Everyone at my table kind of laughed about it and we just randomly answered the questions. The data was totally useless.

At the end the person running this fiasco asked if there were any questions. I, being me, of course got up and ranted about being dragged out of my closet and forced to come to a “voluntary” event, and this encouraged a bunch of other students to voice their disapproval as well. To my recollection they didn’t do anything close to this a second time, but even after forty years the memory still stings a bit.

Just to get Paul off my back I filled out the survey. I answered every question wrong and in the parts that required you to fill out an answer I put “I am just filling this out to get Paul Namaste off my back. Enjoy your data”.

I’ve now configured my e-mail server to block all e-mail from “ncssm.edu” and “qemailserver.com”.

The experience has also made me reconsider the donation to the school I had written into our trust. That money will now go to the NC Zoo.

In the words of Vivian Ward in the movie Pretty Woman, “big mistake”.