I grew up in Denver, Colorado in the Park Hill neighborhood. After finishing high school in the International Baccalaureate program at George Washington I headed off to Boulder to attend the University of Colorado. Upon graduating I took some time away from school to work a number of jobs. I was happy to do anything that didn’t involve working for a multinational corporation or being on the phone for a significant portion of the day. I ended up doing a host of jobs including landscaping, construction, home remodeling, concert promotion, and stage lighting, before settling on catering. Catering was my primary occupation for about three years but I continued to do it seasonally for eight. As the busiest catering times are the slowest times for school this worked out very well for a  long time. The catering company I worked for focused on high-end off-site catering. I really enjoyed going somewhere different every day for work, consistently meeting new people, and the constant challenge presented by off-site catering. As anyone who has done the job knows, at least half of the work is problem solving.

After three years working outside of school I missed the intellectual  and cultural environment of a university. I applied and enrolled in  the sociology department’s Master’s program at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. Living in Las Vegas is, as anyone who has visited might  imagine, quite an experience. As a sociologist it is  surely a fascinating place. In Las Vegas I continued to work in the service industry barbacking and doing VIP bottle service for the largest nightclub in town not affiliated with a casino. During my time there I also became enthralled with online combat video games, specifically Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I ended up studying the online culture of this game for my master’s thesis. Once I completed my master’s degree I was faced with the choice of returning to Boulder or remaining in Las Vegas to work on my PhD. I decided three years was long enough to spend living in Las Vegas and returned to Boulder.

Upon returning to Colorado to begin work on a PhD in sociology I was happy to still pick up a few shifts catering for the same company. The catering company I worked for closed its doors after more than forty years in business while I was in the PhD program at CU Boulder. At that point I got a job in downtown Denver barbacking and tending bar. I did this until I simply could not balance the demands of a PhD program, including a teaching assistantship, and a second job.

Some of my hobbies include origami, cycling, kicking footbag, photography, keyboard shortcuts, building computers, video editing and I am an avid fan of movies and music. In the past few years horror movies in particular have re-captured my interest. Horror and how it is represented and constructed is revealing of different aspects of a culture. I particularly enjoy live music and go as often as I can. Denver and Boulder have a fantastic music scene and the mountain towns and festivals in the summer get more impressive every year.