When I was 17

When I was seventeen, a lot happened.  I was learning calculus and finite math, and went to Halifax and then Montreal to take the SATs.  In June I travelled on an airplane for the first time when my parents and I visited Britain and France. I kept a journal of it, but today I'm embarrassed to read what I wrote when I was that young!

I read quite a few books that year for the first time. Stuff like I, Claudius, Watership Down, Brave New World, To Kill a Mockingbird, Billy Budd and Poe's stories.

I also saw movies like Superman, Hair, Norma Rae, The Wiz, The China Syndrome, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  The big movie event that year was the release of Apocalypse Now, but I didn't see that for a couple of years.

This was in 1979, the year of the Iranian revolution. (If you ask me, the Americans had it coming!) It led to a new Energy Crisis, with hoarders making long queues in front of gas stations like in 1973.  A lot of people blamed President Carter for responding weakly and not providing "motivating" leadership, but they were slow to say what he should have been doing.  Now that I think about it, I realize that they should have rationed gasoline.