I was born and raised in Washington State, living in a small rural city with a population of approximately 2500 people. I enjoy completing a job and doing it well. As a child (before I began to work), I was told if I wanted something, I needed to work and earn the money to buy it myself. My first boss told me his motto for work which I will never forget. “Work as fast as you can effectively and efficiently. I would do anything to keep that job. After all, earning eight bucks an hour isn’t your average job for a 14 year old high school student (this was in the year 2000). I cleaned Dial-a-Ride Buses during the school year and detailed Porsches, Hummers, Mustangs, other automobiles, RVs, boats, and private airplane jets during the summer.
Having a strong desire to achieve the highest rank in the scouting program, I worked hard at the yearly camps and activities and pushed my leaders to organize more activities which would focus on the other scouts and helping them achieve their various ranks, earning my Eagle Scout Award by age 16. Some of my favorite scouting memories are week-long hikes our scout troop took through the Washington mountains. After one awful hike filled with mosquitoes our troop inherited the nick name “The Skeeter Shouts” and our shout became “buzz OFF!” No joke, by the third day of the hike, everybody in our group had over a hundred bites on a single arm from fingertip to elbow.
I play tennis, basketball, and my favorite sport, ice hockey! Throughout elementary school and middle school, I played basketball on a team which did very well. I played singles in tennis during High School and ever since I’ve been going to college, I play ice hockey when I have a spare moment. I’m still an amateur, but I love it!
During my junior year in high school I had a choice to do a running start program (go to a nearby local community college and earn college credit), or work and receive high school credit to graduate through a Cooperative Office Education Program. I decided it would be best in the long run to get my foot in the door in a work setting so I chose the later option. My plan has so far turned out successful and I’m still working for the same organization (Pacific Northwest National Laboratories) as a technical intern student. I attended a year at BYU immediately after high school and served an honorable mission for my church in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
While I’ve been going to college, I’ve bounced around with my major. I began my schooling attempting to major in Chemical Engineering. I’ve always enjoyed math and chemistry and figured this would be an appropriate and fun major to go into. After taking two intense semesters of strictly math, chemistry, and other “G.E.” classes, I realized that it wasn’t for me. I went on my mission and came back to college with total confidence that computer science was the major for me. I have always loved solving puzzles! Rubik’s cubes, disconnect the rings, and other kinds of puzzles always fascinated me. I would work hours and hours until I solved them. Surely, trying to input algorithms into a computer to get a program to function properly would be the same thing. Well, so I thought. After one semester and one class of that major, I realized that there would be no way to get through that major and have the time to spend doing homework in my other classes. Every minute of the day was spent working on my computer science labs which for some reason, never did “click” for me. So now I’m here at the beginning of my fourth semester at college. My new major is Information Systems. The program is ranked as one of the best in the nation and I have had a lot of fun (and a few really long nights) doing 40-60 hour projects within two-week deadlines of each other for an entire semester.
