You can call him the best dressed senior boy, brilliant computer programmer and mathematician, or extremely skilled magician.
Even if you don’t know him, it isn’t easy to miss his well put-together attire. Senior Austin Bisharat commonly sports either a pair of brownish-red oxfords, a brown Sartoriale sport coat, or a patchwork blue and grey denim button-down to school, currently his three favorite items in his wardrobe. Bisharat credits his “swagged out to the max” father (who has about three closets, one for every season) for influencing Bisharat’s style.
Describing his routine for picking out what to wear, Bisharat said, “I am not great at matching patterns, but I feel obligated to have at least one of the colors in my shirt to match the color of my pants, one to match my shoes, and one to match my socks. I almost always do this the night before, and sometimes, it takes me as long as half an hour.”
Bisharat owns exactly seven pocket squares, and more ties than he can count.
Additionally, Bisharat enjoys reading, especially Lord of the Rings (which he read by candlelight), magic, programming, Toys R Us, frisbee, cooking, music (classic rock, Seattle hip-hop, sound track music), superheroes, fashion, law, and “other artisanal stuffs”. He also likes the word “artisanal”. He is good at cooking, counting on his fingers in different bases, reciting digits of pi, interpreting modern art, and “lots of other useless things”.
“My favorite thing about Austin is that he’s always willing to do anything,” said Bisharat’s friend, senior Jamey Hollis. “He’s always down for whatever, whenever.”
Bisharat says he is not so great at anything artistic. But after taking a programming camp the summer after fourth grade at iD Tech Camps, he realized he loved programming for a number of reasons.
“I consider myself incapable of true artistic or qualitative thought, so a language for thought that is purely logical and quantitative is amazing,” Bisharat said. “Programming is a way for me to represent my thoughts outside myself, which, in of itself, is pretty cool, but then I can take the code that I have written and use it.”
Another one of Bisharat’s well-known talents is magic. Magic, Bisharat says, is one of the few things he does not view quantitatively, and he likes it because it is an interesting way to connect with people. Seeing a magic trick is like having an inside joke; it creates a sense of exclusivity among those who saw the trick, Bisharat said.
“Even complete strangers who see a trick together will understand each others’ experience while being unable to explain it to those who weren’t present,” Bisharat said. “I love striving to create those experiences for people, and participating in them as well.”
“Austin’s a wizard. I’ll be hanging out with him and he’ll just be palming coins randomly,” Hollis said. “When he does tricks they’re insane.”
As for what he would like to do in the future, Bisharat said he wants to program in Silicon Valley. Programming is a big part of Bisharat’s life, and working at a company that is just starting up would give him more influence over the codes being written and in building the product.
“I think of working at a small software startup the same way someone might think of raising a child,” Bisharat said.
If he were to get a tattoo, Bisharat would get a diagram that was etched on plaques on the Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, and Voyager 2 spacecrafts; the only four human-made objects to leave our solar system. The image expresses where our solar system is using binary numbers and horizontal and vertical lines. One of the diagrams on the plaques shows the location of our solar system in the galaxy in relation to 14 pulsar stars.
“Messages that are intended to last a long time, such as those one the Voyager and Pioneer spacecrafts, must rely on very little context. I think it is poetic to have something as permanent as a tattoo mimic that,” Bisharat said.
One of Bisharat’s favorite weekly haunts is In-n-Out.
“The food tastes like unicorn meat deep fried in bacon fat with a healthy side of rainbows,” Bisharat said of his obsession. “I go about once a week, and I usually get a Number One (double double, drink, fries) because it has the right meat to cheese to bun ratio.”
“One night at like 1 AM I got a text from him talking about some people he saw at In-N-out. I asked him about it the next day and apparently he was just driving around at 2 and decided he wanted a double double,” Hollis said, “Austin is very spontaneous.”
“I like spontaneity because I personally can’t handle a rigid routine. Spur of the moment stuff forces me to be present and focus on what is right in front of me and enjoy whatever is going on,” Bisharat said.
And senior boys, for those of you sweating about what to wear to prom, fear not, the most fashionable man of 2013 is here to help. “I think a suit is the way to go. If you can, go for an interesting color, like a blue (not navy), brown, lighter grey, or cream.”
Bisharat says he likes pinstripes and windowpane patterns. He advises to choose a shirt where the most predominant color of the shirt matches one of the lesser colors of the suit, and then choosing a tie that has both colors.
