A Brief History of Kyle Keller
August 2002: Born in obscurity in Laguna Niguel, CA.
July 2005: Family camping trip #1 to Tuolumne Meadows. The first of many summer camping trips to TM and the beginning of a lifelong relationship with the Sierras.
September 2007: Showed up for my first day of Kindergarten at San Juan Elementary School. “Wait a sec, why is everyone here speaking Spanish?” Because my parents enrolled me in a dual immersion Spanish-English program, that’s why. I wore Target polo shirts and navy blue shorts for the next six years and became part of the elementary school melting pot. It all seemed normal to me.
June 2011: Won the AA Little League championship game with the Cardinals. We beat the Giants 16-11 and many chocolate cupcakes and juice boxes were consumed after the game. The greatest sports day of my life.
September 2013: Left all my San Juan Elementary amigos and moved to Niguel Hills Middle School (a normal English-speaking school) for 6th-8th grade. One of the hardest years of my life. Basically, I survived by finding my best friend from preschool and joining the ultra-demanding NHMS Orchestra program. Those are the three things that saved me in middle school: Chris Hamilton, the magnificent Miss Choi, and eating lunch with all the other orchestra nerds in Miss Choi’s classroom every day.
August 2015: My first legit backpacking trip (to Cottonwood Lakes). With Chris, of course.
May 2016: I guess all those lunchtime practice sessions paid off. I was chosen for the SCSBOA Honors Orchestra two years in a row and got to perform at the snazzy Kennedy Performing Arts Center in La Palma, CA. My instrument was the standup bass and I played it with swagger.
September 2016: What the heck, why not change schools again? After hearing about Orange County School of the Arts (OCSA) from my dad, I decided to submit a last-minute application with a few writing samples. To my surprise, I was accepted to the Creative Writing Conservatory in the fall.
I spent the next four years waking up at 5:55 a.m. every morning, driving to the Laguna Hills transportation center with my mom (on her way to work), riding the Route 83 bus to downtown Santa Ana at 7:12, attending OCSA classes from 8:30-4:45, running back to the bus stop to catch the 5:04 bus back to Laguna Hills, finally arriving home around 6:15 p.m. every night. It was an exhausting four years but I’m glad I did it.
Summer 2018: Started my first job as a Ticket Seller and Info Booth Guy at the renowned and funky Sawdust Art Festival in Laguna Beach, CA. I got hired at least partially because of a doodle I drew at the top of my job application. I spent the next three summers riding my scooter through downtown Laguna to and from the Sawdust grounds (which are in fact covered with truckloads of sawdust each year) where I sold tickets, answered customer questions, and drew giant doodles on the Sawdust daily whiteboard. Man, everyone should have a first job like that.
May 2020: After visiting multiple campuses with my dad and taking an eye-opening trip to Missoula, I was 90% sure I was headed to the University of Montana. But when I drove up the hill to UC Santa Cruz and saw the wide open spaces and redwood trees and gaggles of wild turkeys wandering around campus, I knew that’s where I wanted to be.
April 2022: While taking “Intro to Radio” and “Radio Production” during spring quarter, I started interning at KZSC 88.1 FM every Friday morning. On my very first day, legendary morning host Dangerous Dan asked me to come up with a nickname. Right there, live, on the air. “Calamity Kyle,” I ad-libbed.
Dan and I became fast friends and I spent the next two years co-hosting the long-running “BushWhacker’s Breakfast Club” show every Friday morning from 6:00-9:00 a.m. In addition to taking listener requests and playing an eclectic mix of indie music (country, rock, bluegrass, folk), Dan and I interviewed musicians and politicians and civic leaders from the Santa Cruz community and beyond. When Dan was working his real job or away on trips, I took primary responsibility for Bushwhacker’s and hosted the show with my friend and fellow intern, Katrina (aka Kaos).
August 2022: Mid-way through my sophomore year, I submitted a long shot application to become a Resident Assistant (RA) and was selected to join the RA team in the fall. So in addition to being a full-time student, I served as an all-purpose advisor, counselor, and problem-solver for 28-32 undergraduate students during my junior and senior years at UCSC.
Summer 2022 and 2023: Realizing that a Literature major might not lead to many job offers, I decided to move to Berkeley for two consecutive summers to complete a Minor in Journalism. The first summer (2022) was brutal: three semester-length classes crammed into six weeks, a last-minute sublet in a run-down UC Berkeley student house, living in a new place where I didn’t know anybody or anything. “What on earth am I doing here?” I asked myself several times a day.
The second summer (2023) was a lot better: only two classes, a handful of good friends, and a very cool sublet apartment on a tree-lined street in North Berkeley. This time around, I had a better feel for the summer school routine and the various nooks and crannies of Berkeley. I also made it over to SFO and Marin a few times and was able to enjoy some of the vibrant Bay Area music scene (which I intend to get back to some day).
September 2023: After taking “Press Production” and working as a staff writer at City on a Hill Press (CHP) the prior quarter, I was invited to work even harder for free and serve as a News Editor. I was always confident in my writing skills but working at CHP taught me things I didn’t know – like how to be part of a team, how to edit other people’s work, and how to burn the midnight oil and rewrite a story five different times in order to get it to press on time.
June 2024: After taking my final trail runs and mountain bike rides amongst the hallowed Santa Cruz redwoods, I moved out of the concrete Porter dorms once and for all. Watch out world, here comes another liberal arts major ready to do something. Something worthy and meaningful.
Post-graduation update: The day after graduating, I loaded up my 2014 Prius V and drove to Bishop, CA, where I spent the next six months working as a research assistant on a project studying land stewardship and environmental change in the Eastern Sierras (more info on my resumé). In January, I bought a one-way ticket to Peru with Chris (who else?) and departed on a three month backpacking trip/walkabout to South America. If all goes well, I’ll be back in April ready to get started on whatever comes next.