Born and raised in Bahrain, FQ came to Choate last year as a new junior. He lived in Hill House as both a junior last year and a prefect this year. He plays Varsity Volleyball and enjoys ceramics. He will be attending Boston College next year.
For those of you who know me, hi I’m FQ. For those of you who don’t, well you might have heard about me. Here are a couple of hints: I’m that 5’6” Middle Eastern guy from Ba-what’s-its-name; I’m that twenty year old senior who is about to graduate after 6 years of high school; I’m that guy who has more hair on his arms and legs than half the senior class combined; I’m that guy who needs to shave twice a day just so to keep from tripping over his own beard; but what I’m most known for is being that guy whose first name is “Faeq.”
It was the first day of orientation and I was standing on the great lawn staring at people, trying to find a person I could talk to or have some sort of contact with. But every time I wanted to go up to someone the same thought went through my mind: How will I pronounce my name? “Hi I’m Joe” said this guy standing next to me. I looked back at him and said “Hi, I’m Faeq, nice to meet you.” Now, I thought that I might have bad breath or something written on my face, because to be honest, I’ve never seen so many colors appear on the same face at once. “Come again” he said, “what’s your name?” I spent the better half of the rest of the day trying to get him to pronounce my name correctly, and needless to say I failed miserably, so I just asked him to call me FQ.
Another encounter I had—or should I say others had—with my name occurred during that same week in my first class ever at Choate. I was sitting there with fifteen other kids, waiting nervously as the teacher started taking attendance. As soon as he picked up the attendance sheet I knew that his eyes had fallen on my name, because the expressions on his face was one you only see on teachers’ faces when the F-bomb is dropped. Finally after ten long seconds of silence, “Fa?—Faee?—FAK?” he tried, then said with sigh “I’m not even going to try to pronounce this name!”
At first I thought that my name would be a huge issue, you know, since it sounds like you-know-what, but the rest of my time at Choate showed me how wrong I was. That first class caused the news about my name to spread around campus like wild fire, as does every other piece of gossip at Choate. I soon had people come up to me and ask me to pronounce my name. “FQ” I replied. “No, we want you to pronounce your real name!” I’ve got to admit, trying to get 250 kids to pronounce my real name became tedious after a while, but it also gave me an opportunity to meet people, get to know them better, and show then who I really am. A handful of those 250 kids became some of my best friends. Some really close relationships merged from a simple fifteen minutes of trying to teach someone how to pronounce my name without having to swear. And if you were wondering, the guy I talked to during orientation also ended up becoming one of my best friends here at Choate.
Looking back at those days, I laugh at myself for being afraid of what people might have thought of my name or how they would have react upon hearing it. I guess I just had a hard time rejecting a notion I grew up with: I always thought it safest to be afraid of anything that I considered different. But my two years at Choate taught me otherwise. Choate has taught me that different is good. Different is what makes up this community. And the most important thing is that different is acceptable and not feared.
So here I am, standing before you, a senior happy to graduate after 6 long years of high school. So to those of you who know me, hi I’m FQ, Thanks for all the moments and memories, thanks for all the laughs and tears, thanks for all the times I can look back upon and thank God my name is Faeq. And to those of you who don’t know me, here is a piece of advice: don’t live your time at Choate by just going through the motions. Don’t just be parts of a wave that starts at your freshman year and crashes at the shores of your senior year. Stand out, be noticed, and celebrate your difference, even if your nickname is Shmitty. They are these moments that mean the most to you, and they are these moments that will be engraved in your memory forever, knowing that you have been noticed and acknowledged for your uniqueness, not your similarities. Class of '06, we made it!
