Currently attending Florida State University, William Pledger has taken TPS for six years before graduating in 2020. According to William, he has two sisters who’ve all taken TPS classes and his mom, Mrs. Pledger teaches Russian classes at TPS. This week, I had the opportunity to meet up with him and discuss those unexpected encounters we’ve had with the GP Ghost and the serious consequences of procrastination.
What are you currently majoring in?
William: The official title for my major is Cell Molecular Neuroscience, but it’s just a big fancy word for how the brain works.
Why did you choose to major in neuroscience?
William: Science has always interested me, and I wanted to go into that field. I want to be a doctor, so I’m planning to go to med school after this. I’ve heard that medical school is stressful, and trying to get into it is also stressful, but it’s really just experiencing the stress from high school junior and senior years again, but just five times worse. I always knew that this was my calling; I’ve always wanted to do something that helps people when they really need to be helped.
Have you been a part of the clay staff before?
William: I wrote for clay from 2018-2020. I was a political analyst for my junior year, and then I did the science and psychology column for clay during my senior year. I wrote for the science column because it has always interested me, and that’s what I’m doing right now– studying neuroscience.
What was the best and worst thing about working at clay?
William: I enjoyed the projects that clay does as a team. So, my favorite thing about clay is either the Meet the Staff articles or when you split into groups for the Round Robin stories. The worst is probably having to submit everything once a month and with the deadlines.
What was your first day of school at TPS like?
William: Back in the day, I was in GP5. which looks pretty much the same as GP7. The best thing about GP5 was the emojis; it was better than both GP6’s and GP7’s. For my first year, I was definitely someone who would spam the chat box a lot.
Exactly, as TPSers, we’re always finding new ways to spam emojis despite the challenge of the release of each newest version of Gather Place, which always updates in a while. Any memorable encounters with the GP Ghost (aka tech issues, especially when the teacher gets kicked out of class)?
William: I don’t remember people calling it the GP Ghost, but we would say that the teacher got kicked out. Then, students would just blow up the chat and announce, “alright it’s time for a party now!” Of course, we couldn’t do anything, but someone would always say that for fun.
Ah yes, and then after a second the teacher reappears. Any opinions on memes?
William: I’ve run the TPS “official” memes account on Instagram, and so we always had jokes about the procrastination school. It makes sense because I’ve never met a TPSer who got everything in on time. I didn’t start the memes account, but I continued the account, which my friend had started. I love making memes, but last year, college was just really busy. I realized, if I can’t put a great effort into the account, I will just end it. On April first, I made an April fools meme and then stopped posting on the account.
I’ve heard TPS being called “The Procrastination School” (which is somewhat true). Any impressive accomplishments due to procrastinating?
William: When I took Economics with Mr. Rucker, in the middle of the semester we had a five page paper due about the Berlin Airlift. I’ve looked at the sources before, but I wrote the whole five pages on the day it was due. I started in the morning and worked on it throughout the day; it was due at midnight, and in less than a day I wrote a paper and I got 100% on it.
Unfortunately, clay’s spotlight articles have somewhat gradually transformed into humor articles over the years, making the life of spotlight columnists much harder. Was writing the spotlight articles always this challenging back in the day?
William: I do remember that there was always guy’s or girl’s spotlight articles back in the day. However, I’m surprised to hear that spotlight articles are eventually taking the place of humor articles.
What advice would you give to younger students?
William: Advice – I got two, one serious and one funny. Make the most of your time. You only live a day once, have certain experiences once, take a class once (hopefully). Even if you have a weekly activity, enjoy it all. Everything ends at some point, and you want to look back with good memories. Also, this is more relevant for seniors and juniors, but apply to Florida State University! We have had a 400% TPS student increase in the past 5 years. That’s only 4 students, but I doubt any other university is putting up those numbers.
Photo credit: William Pledger