Life Prior To Summer 2003
Cottrell grew up in Concord, North Carolina and Gainesville, Florida, with two younger siblings, a brother and a sister. His parents, who later divorced, are William Cottrell, an anesthesiologist, and Heidi Schwiebert. According to his mother, who referred to her son as being socially retarded, and according to other sources, Cottrell had trouble fitting in with his peers during his childhood and adolescence. From a young age, he was fascinated with science, especially math and physics. As a sixth-grader, he submitted a report on quantum mechanics for extra credit. The teacher suspected that he had plagiarized the work and gave him an "F" grade for the assignment. This event caused Cottrell to stop excelling in school, and led him to a life as rebel and class troublemaker. However, his love for math and physics never waned, and in high school, he began taking college-level math and physics courses at colleges near home.
Despite his poor high school academic performance, he wrote a convincing college application essay that compelled the University of Chicago to accept his admittance as part of its class of 2002. In college, he excelled academically and received many honors from the math and physics departments, and earned his bachelor's in physics. It was also the first time he found acceptance from his peers. After graduating from college, he was accepted to the graduate physics program at Caltech, where he would meet Tyler Johnson, who was also studying physics and finishing up his undergraduate work. Besides physics, the two young men shared an interest in pulling adrenaline-inducing pranks. Among the pranks they pulled around Pasadena were doctoring a Starbucks sign to read "Starfucks" and pasting "Go Metric" stickers all over buildings, including the "hard-to-reach" areas.
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