How did I get here?
I was born and raised in Battle Creek, MI, which you may have heard of if you ever read the side of the cereal box while you eat. I always loved school and always wanted to be a teacher -an elementary teacher when I was in grade school, a band director when I was in band, a math teacher when I was in high school, and finally a sociology professor once I got to college.
I actually started out as a math major at GVSU, where I went to school for undergrad, and to this day have a minor in mathematics. I've always loved math, and found it conceptually both interesting and beautiful. Oddly enough, it was some of the same beauty and logic that also appealed to me when I took my first social theory course as an undergraduate, with Dr. George Lundskow. I was hooked on social theory right away, and soon found sociology a better match to my interest in social activism than mathematics.
After undergrad, I took a year off and went to Nanjing, China to teach English for 6 months. (I did learn a couple years of Mandarin Chinese first, much of which I've since forgotten.) It was there that I learned that I was accepted into the only sociology grad program to which I'd applied, Loyola University Chicago. I began graduate school in 2003, earned my M.A. in 2005, and finally my Ph.D. in 2009. I moved here to Bloomington-Normal in the summer of 2009.
I actually started out as a math major at GVSU, where I went to school for undergrad, and to this day have a minor in mathematics. I've always loved math, and found it conceptually both interesting and beautiful. Oddly enough, it was some of the same beauty and logic that also appealed to me when I took my first social theory course as an undergraduate, with Dr. George Lundskow. I was hooked on social theory right away, and soon found sociology a better match to my interest in social activism than mathematics.
After undergrad, I took a year off and went to Nanjing, China to teach English for 6 months. (I did learn a couple years of Mandarin Chinese first, much of which I've since forgotten.) It was there that I learned that I was accepted into the only sociology grad program to which I'd applied, Loyola University Chicago. I began graduate school in 2003, earned my M.A. in 2005, and finally my Ph.D. in 2009. I moved here to Bloomington-Normal in the summer of 2009.