Age: 24
Gender: Male
Field of Study: Robotics
Physical Description: PJ is 6’1 and weighs 155 pounds. He is normally a pale person, but has a slight tan due to swimming. He has a round head, and a heart shaped face. There is a small scar on his right cheek, and he has a small, sharp chin, with average-sized lips that are always formed into a friendly smile. His hair is an unruly mess of black curls long enough to cover his small ears, with a single stripe of light blue on the right side. His eyebrows are a bit bushy, and his eyes are the color of dark blue. He has a set of freckles that are dotted across his nose and a few are on his right and left cheekbones. He has a deep, long scar on the middle of his left palm.
PJ normally likes to dress up in t-shirts of various colors, jeans with some chains linked up to the pockets of them for protection and some red and black plaid shirts. On the day of the trip, he was wearing a green t-shirt, a red and black plaid shirt, dark blue jeans, black leather combat boots, a black parka coat, red gloves and a dark blue, woolly hat. He is also wearing a silver cross necklace that is hidden under his coat and he is wearing black eyeliner around his eyes. He also has his mother’s copy of Frankenstein on hand for sentimental reasons even if it is a bit torn and worn on many of the pages and he has taken it on the trip.
Background:
- PJ was born in Seattle, Washington to Robert Summers, a financial manager, and Isabella Summers, an real-estate agent. PJ is the oldest of five siblings as he has two other brothers and two sisters. The oldest sister, Taylor, is going through her final year of high school. His brothers, George and Doug, who are twins, are going through their final year of middle school. The youngest sister, Maria is in the third grade. Robert doesn't really like to spoil the children with money as he doesn't want them to be too bratty and think that they are intitled to anything that is expensive. Isabella, on the other hand, likes to award the children for good behaviour and is more easy-going on them as a result. PJ isn't that fussed about how his parents handle the money in his family and he prefers the money being saved up for important things such as food, clothes and bills.
- His parents named him PJ as they wanted something simple for the name Paul James which is the name of Robert's father and they didn't want to make it too complicated. He doesn't mind when people ask about what PJ stands for as he jokes about his parents named him after pyjamas and PJ being just a nickname of that. He is kind of embarrassed of having two names and prefers PJ anyway.
- PJ is actually pretty close with both his parents and his siblings. He might be seem as a bit foolish and naïve at times by his friends and family. He likes to keep loyal and supportive towards other people whenever he can. He bonds with his mother over sci-fi books as she was the one who got him into them and he and his father always discuss his love for robotics in general as his father likes to learn about what his children loves or dreams of doing in the future. He always makes sure to help Maria with her homework or babysit her when their parents can’t, even when he has moved out to live with other people. He lived with a former friend called Gus for a while and they had a falling out which resulted in him moving somewhere else. He felt bummed out over losing a friend and having to move out, resulting in him going back to staying with his family for a while. The people that he moved in with was his friends, Doug and Tonja, that he met at the coffee shop and they were working there as well. PJ is pretty close with Doug who is pretty laid-back and a stoner and Tonja is a bit bossy, but has a kind heart. PJ always teaches his brothers about swimming techniques, he makes sure to keep an eye on them when they get swimming lessons to have fun and he would always be their ride to and from the pool. He has been a shoulder to cry on for Taylor when she broke up with her girlfriend and he will always try to give her some good advice that normally helps her with how to handle things next time in a new relationship, despite his own relationship having its own issues.
- PJ got into sci-fi books at the young age of ten, as he noticed that his mother had left a copy of Frankenstein on her chair’s armrest. His curiosity got the better of him, and he dove into Mary Shelley’s world and subsequently the genre. His mother was pleased to find a way of bonding with her son and she brought him more she thought that he would like to read. His favorite ones are The Blazing World, The Stars My Destination, Dune and Ice. He keeps a collection of sci-fi books in his room, including his mother’s book that she let him keep for himself. The collection is full of ones that his mother had brought for him as she thought that they would be his taste and he saved up some money from the coffee shop for himself to get some novels himself as well.
- PJ decided to get into swimming at twelve as he was getting teased for being a bit overweight and he wanted to keep himself fit and healthy. He was curious about some sports at school and he found himself more intrigued to check out swimming as it looked like a lot of fun to him. He ended up joining the school's swim team and he enjoyed being a bit competitive with other students in a friendly rivalry. He also wanted people to like him more and he did it mostly to gain friends, however, he started to like swimming for himself and he likes to do it for a fun time as well. He still does swimming to this day and he enjoys doing it with his family whenever he can.
- PJ was considered a pretty energetic and a very friendly person by other students and friends in school while he was growing up. He was a brilliant student in most of his classes, and his teachers often praised him for how smart and focused he was. He paid attention in all of his lessons, even in his worst subject, History. That subject is the only one that he got a C for, as he didn't feel like making the effort. Even when he didn’t study for any exams, the answers came to him naturally. His grades consisted of As and Bs and he was always on the good side of his teachers, being seen as a teacher’s pet by some of the other students. As a result, he was often afraid of making others jealous or envious of his grades, and worried that they saw him as arrogant. His favorite subject is Science as he enjoyed learning about Biology, Chemistry and Physics due to his love for anything that made him think of his obsession with science fiction and this started to pique his interest in Robotics slowly. His least favorite subject was History as he found it to be a bore and he didn’t think that he would use any information from the past in his future. He felt like the History lessons were too repetitive and he suffered from some mental fatigue while he was still in school.
- PJ thought that moving out was like a new chapter in his life and he wanted to try something new, even if he was nervous about leaving his family behind. After he left his home at eighteen to live with a friend in Tacoma, PJ decided to get a job in a coffee shop as a barista and he just likes to be in a calming and a smaller environment that feels like a comfort zone. He likes to be able to put a smile on customers’ faces and he can work well under pressure when the days may get busy. He found the fast pacing and the repeating tasks a good way for him to just focus on his work over his unnecessary thoughts that he has sometimes. He still works at the coffee shop and he gets along well with his co-workers.
- When he was twenty, he ended up in an incident when he was closing up the shop one day for his boss who trusted him for the day and was away at a family emergency. He saw a young woman getting robbed by a masked man. Normally he would call the police; but he ended up reacting on instinct when he saw that the man was trying to attack her with a knife and he ended up getting himself hurt in the process. He ended up scaring the man off and the woman became a life-long friend after he helped her out. He ended up with a scar on his palm and another scar on his face as a result. The attack did shake him up for a while and it made him not want to run into things at such a risk in the future. Since then, he was very cautious about working on his own at the cafe and told his boss that he wasn’t going to close alone ever again.
- After a while, PJ decided that he wanted to enroll into the University of Cascadia. He wanted to study the subject of robotics, as he always liked the idea of what it would be like to have robots help people out with mundane and difficult tasks once they got to an advanced age. He has designed and made a few small robots in his room in his free time, and he is hoping to evolve them into something even better. He likes to be able to experiment, repair and tinker with his robots and even if they end up failing, he learns something new and tries again to see if he can improve it. He had managed to make a few robot arms that sometimes failed, but he glad to be able to learn how to continue improving on his own. He is hopeful that he can make an AI mini robot of his own that will be able to display both emotional and logical behaviour to be able to interact better with humans. He decided to take a course about Cognitive Science to help him understand the study of the study of thought, learning, and mental organization, which draws on aspects of psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and computer modelling.
- PJ had never been in a romantic relationship with anyone until he met Daniella Bonifacio at the university and their relationship was very casual for a while. Daniella wanted it to be more intensely romantic, but he wasn't as comfortable with making the relationship move on too quickly. Elizabeth Rodney was introduced into the couple's relationship by Daniella as she knew her for a while beforehand and PJ ended up rolling with it as he thought it could make things more fun and exciting. He was nervous for a while as he didn't know Elizabeth that well, but they started to bond over just talking to each other and he found himself falling in love with her as well as Daniella. He feels like he is the only one who wants the relationship to be positive and full of good vibes. He knows that their relationship is full of issues such as a clash of different personalities and likely cases of jealousy, but he tries his best to avoid them and he doesn’t want to get into arguments about things failing for their relationship. He knows that Elizabeth is the current peacemaker of the relationship but feels like there is nothing that he can do to change things, so he tries to be ignorant of everything that is going wrong for the three of them and he normally stays away to hang out with his friends or other people in general.
- PJ is a very hard-working person who likes to be a people pleaser and he has a small group of friends that he likes to hang out with in his free time. He doesn’t like to make other people upset and if things get messy, he will leave quickly as conflicts make him think of the attack from years ago. He is scared of getting hurt once again and he does think that he should have seen a therapist for his constant worries which he plans to do after the trip. He makes sure to hide his own problems behind a smile and he isn't sure if he can keep it a secret for very long.
Skills and Interests: Sci-fi novels and movies, swimming, science, robotics
Assets: PJ is a kind person which will make him approachable for other people to trust him. He is very athletic due to his swimming workout and he can be very agile with his leg strength. He can be pretty calm depending on how the situation can turn out. He likes to act decisive, being able to act quickly and likes to encourage and support other people through hard times.
Limitations: He can be a bit insensitive at times, as he tries to disregard negativity rather than actively engaging with it. This could cause rifts with others, as him trying to avoid conflict could come across as uncaring or cold. If he ends up seeing someone getting attacked, he could freeze up due to his trauma that he remembers from years ago.
