Upon
completing my B.A. in math science at Connecticut College in 1990,
I promptly departed for the west coast to seek fame and fortune
in the music industry. I landed in Los Angeles, CA and got my
big break when I was hired by an independent music publishing
company that administered the catalogs of such notable artists
as Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, and Chicago (do you sense a theme
here? All dead...well consider the careers of the fellas in Chicago
by that time.). At any rate, my official title was Professional
Manager (sounds important, yes?). I was in charge of bringing
in some less dead clients, and trying to get our older and more
dead client's songs recorded by newer and more alive artists.
In the end, the "industry" people with whom I had to
deal made me more envious of the dead clients than the live.
It was around this time that I met a woman whose name also happens to be Sandy. She was working as a wildlife biologist in the Sierra mountains. When her field season ended, and my thirst for the music industry had been quenched, we decided to get back to our families on the east coast (Sandy is from Annapolis, MD and I am from Poughkeepsie, NY). We landed in Annapolis, MD in 1994. It was at this time, that I first thought about the merits of becoming a mathematics teacher.
My first teaching experience was at the Westtown School. Westtown was a middle sized independent boarding school in Westchester, PA. My first year as a teacher was an endurance test. Having been out of academia for four years, with no experience in teaching, it was all I could do to keep my hands and feet in the car until the ride came to a full stop. I learned a great deal that year about a great many things. I left Westtown and found Virginia Episcopal School, a small independent boarding school in Lynchburg, VA. Sandy and I were married in the interim (October of 1995), and we stayed on at V.E.S for three years until she decided to join the masters program in Wildlife Biology at the University of Georgia. As fate would have it, a position opened up for me in the mathematics department at Athens Academy shortly thereafter.
I am presently working full time at Athens Academy. I teach Algebra II and Precalculus, assist the girl's varsity soccer coach, and advise the school's environmental group. I began my masters in math education at UGA in the fall of 2000, around the same time that Sandy and I bought our first house. We have two great danes named Brindle and Shelby who add nicely to a thoroughly chaotic life.