Volume 1. Gus's Schooling

This is written to set the record straight.  The Wikipedia page sites interviews.  Unfortunately--for the record--not all of Gus's published interviews were historically accurate.  He did not complete high school on-line.  He completed a semester of college on-line.  This entry is to set the record straight about his schooling.  There will be other posts to set the record straight about other inaccurately detailed parts of Gus's life. Perhaps the Wikipedia authors will read this.

Gus was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania.  His father was an assistant professor of history at Muhlenberg College.  The family moved to Long Beach, NY on July 1, 2001 when he was still four years old.  They lived in a second-floor apartment at 538 West Hudson Street.  He began kindergarten at Lindell Elementary School, directly across the street from his home, that fall. 

(Note: In the first few days of Gus's kindergarten year, on September 11, 2001, the Twin Towers were destroyed.  The smoke plumes were clearly visible from his kindergarten classroom.)

In the third grade, Gus was placed in Long Beach’s gifted and talented program. 

In middle school, he was placed in accelerated classes.

In the winter of Gus’s sophomore year in high school, when he was 15, his father moved out of the home.  Gus, his big brother, Oskar, and his mother moved to 34 East Walnut St. in Long Beach, where Gus was eventually to record Lil Peep Part One, Feelz, Vertigo, (most of) California Girls, Garden, In the Bedroom I Confess, Mall Music, Romeo’s Regrets, and several tracks that were released as singles—including his well-known Star Shopping.  The house remains relatively unchanged, and one can even see Gus’s stickers on his bedroom window.

Here is the house in spring, 2017.

Here is the house in May, 2021. The landlord did re-do the front steps.  I preferred the old ones, but they were slippery.

October 28, 2012—four days before Gus’s 16^th birthday—Hurricane Sandy hit Long Beach head on.  When Long Beach High School opened up a few weeks later, school had changed.  Gus enjoyed his junior year for that reason.  The adults were relaxed and there was much less pressure on the students academically.  The City of Long Beach was recovering from a massive natural disaster, and so the school district relaxed its pressure on local families.

A year later, having acquired his first tattoo, Gus returned as a senior to find Long Beach High School a very different place.  There were new administrators who were unfamiliar with the student body and culture.  Gus hated school and was ready to drop out.  However, his teacher, Maria Hartmann, helped him to stay in school.  Gus would finish out high school by taking the last two courses he needed for his diploma: English and Social Studies.  Mrs. Hartmann found two teachers whom Gus knew and trusted--Mr. Balsamo and Mr. Petschauer.  They emailed assignments to him, met him in the Long Beach Library after school, and gave him feedback and discussed the work.  He graduated in January, 2014—six months early.

Gus's transcript, below.

 In January, 2014, Gus was accepted to the State University of New York Old Westbury campus. 

He declined to attend.  Instead, he enrolled as an out of state student at Glendale Community College in Pasadena, California.  He was fed up with Long Beach and wanted to go to school with his old friend, Brennan Savage whom he had met when he was in middle school.  Brennan had enrolled at GCC.  Being an out of state student, Gus was unable to register for courses until after the California state residents had registered.  For that reason, he was only able to get into one class with Brennan—a math class.  Gus did not want to be in a class without Brennan, but math was not his strong suit.  He ended up withdrawing from that class in November, 2014. During that fall stint at 1700 University drive, Gus and Brennan bought a GoPro camera together.  Gus made Keep My Coo and Latitude there at that time.  He was 17 years old when he made Keep My Coo, and had just turned 18 when he completed Latitude.

Gus came home for Christmas that winter, went back to Pasadena (where he lived with Brennan) ostensibly to take a try at a spring semester.  Pretty quickly, however, he decided would not go to school that second semester.  Instead, Gus took a red-eye flight home on JetBlue on January 31, 2015.  He arrived home to Kennedy Airport at 6:00 am on Superbowl Sunday, February 1, 2015.  

In the spring of 2015, Gus enrolled at Nassau Community College.  He decided to start courses in the fall term. 

In the fall of 2015, Gus was enrolled at Nassau Community College.  He took four classes—all online.  He took two business classes, one criminal justice class, and one class on art history.  He received three As and one B.  He wrote his term paper for Art History on Ai Wei Wei. His business class project was a 13-page Medical Marijuana Dispensary proposal, complete with Executive Summary, Business Company Description, Industry Description and Outlook, balance sheets and income statement projections. 

Below is Gus's fall schedule.

 Gus emailed his Criminal Justice Professor.

Gus wrote a 5-page paper on Goya's drawings.

Gus's final paper focused on the artist Ai Wei Wei.

Gus made the Dean's list during the only full-time semester he completed.  He did it entirely on-line.  The main thing was that he proved that he could do it.

Instead of enrolling in the spring term, Gus decided to begin performing with Schemaposse.  He had already completed a large body of work by the end of 2015.  He had completed these works in his bedroom at 34 East Walnut Street while going to school full-time.