FAMILY
I wasn’t ready to go to grad school until this moment. I had two little kids at home and my wife was working full time and then some. I scraped-together a living working nights and teaching part time so I could be there when my kids were little. It was hard, but my wife and I made it work. Now my kids can look after themselves. And together, as a family, we decided we were ready for this. When I walk through this campus, I’m not walking alone. When I complete an assignment, I’m not writing it alone. My family is here with me. I can't separate being a dad and being a student. I can’t separate being a husband and being a student.
ENTERTAINMENT
Riding bikes has always been an important part of my life. I guess this started with a movie I watched as a little kid. called Breaking Away. The main character felt trapped by his circumstances growing up in a small working class Indiana town, so he used the bicycle as an opportunity to escape.
The main character took on an Italian persona, studied the language, sang arias from Italian operas, and used his bike to escape into the countryside. There was something about the idea of using the bike as an escape that appealed to me...but it was also the idea of using the bike to move across spaces on a route towards becoming.
I spent a lot of time riding my own bike and dreaming. As a result I raced bikes all across America, and in Netherlands, Belgium, and France. When not writing papers, I still follow cycling online, reading blogs, and watching V-logs. It is my escape. It is this double life I live. That I am not willing to ever give up. There is just too much there.
COMMUNITY
I gravitate towards other learners. My close friends have always been other people who like books and podcasts, who want to do cool things with their lives.
I think the real challenge has always seen to extend this learning, this passion for listening, engaging...to other people in our community. That’s our role as learners and educators. To include others in the process of becoming so that our work benefits others, just as others’ work has benefited us.
SCHOOL
I taught high school for 8 years and that was the most important education I’ve ever received. I worked with students in a number of different settings from international schools in Ireland and in Cambodia, and in US inner-city schools and suburbs. I had so much learning to do as a teacher, and that learning never stopped. My students, colleagues, and our courses had so much to teach me.
What I learned was to be open to learning...to keep learning…that this openness was required to be a good teacher. I think this idea of being open to learning is what kept me on this trajectory towards being here at Clemson. That's my goal: to keep learning. To seek out diverse spaces where I am challenged, and where I can keep learning.