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It seems like I've always been interested in science. It was always, sometimes the only, part of school I did well in. Handwriting was definitely not it.
My parents always had a lot of materials around, stuff to read, so I always read a lot and I really liked Science Fiction.
I had a pastor in our church that was into scuba diving and sailing, and he taught me scuba diving and sailing and sort of got me into,
that was that point I thought I'd do marine biology. Which was not too usual for a kid growing up in Fargo, North Dakota. Yes where the movie was named after, but not filmed.
At that point when I was 17, mostly because I had had enough of the weather, which is pretty bad, that I moved to California, went to Los Angeles.
At that point when I was 17, mostly because I had had enough of the weather, which is pretty bad, that I moved to California, went to Los Angeles.
Maybe not the best move I had ever made. I spent a couple of years there at the University of Southern California, good football games anyway,
and then decided it would be best to move some place a little more like I was used to, which is up in Santa Barbara. Which I'd highly recommend.
I finished out, but interestingly enough, I got to my junior year and realized I didn't really like, at least the way Marine Biology was taught then.
The way it was done, I think for the most part, was very descriptive. Kind of like the old style Biology in general and I liked to get my hands into the guts of how things worked.
At that time that was what you called Molecular Biology, Molecular Genetics, and Biochemistry. So I changed to Biochemistry.
My dad wouldn't pay for a fifth year so I had to work as a carpenter, but I worked my way through the fifth year. And I got a job in Biotech up in the Bay area which was a lot of fun.
You know, a start-up company, and then realized at that point, after not being broke for a while I thought I could stand going back to school
but actually really wanted to be able to decide what I wanted to do for my research. And that's when I went to a graduate program. I went to University of California-Davis
and got my PhD in Biochemistry. Then I went to San Diego and continued in a similar area of work which was to look at
how genes are expressed, how RNA is transcribed, and how it's regulated. That's how I got into the role of chromatin structure stuff.
Then after that I was lucky enough to pretty much go full circle, because what I didn't say at the beginning was I was born in Cheyenne before I moved to Fargo.
People in Cheyenne always wished they lived in Fort Collins. I got a job in Fort Collins as a faculty member,
and I've moved up the ranks through Assistant, Associate; Full Professor and I'm having a great time.