| What is your most memorable childhood experience? | I don’t feel like I have any single memory that sticks out amongst the rest. From family events like sledding at my cousin’s house during the winter holidays, numerous sports stories like broken records, individual plays, and championship wins, and of course fun times with friends growing up building forts or playing street hockey. |
| What immediate family member do you closely identify with and why? | I suppose I identify most with my father. I seem to have gotten my personality from his side of the family, while I look more like my mom’s side. Potentially more so than my father, I have a lot of similarities with his sister, my aunt. We get along extremely well, she’s smart but free spirited. My dad is a bit more serious than the two of us, and I’m sure I can be that way sometimes, but I more regularly match my aunt’s personality. |
| What character traits do you admire in an individual? | I admire intelligence, being communicative, and discipline. Intelligence because to understand or at least have the capacity to, is a path toward higher level thinking and decision making. You can more easily grow as a person when you have the capacity to understand alternative situations and perspectives. Being communicative is key for social interaction and a vital part of the human experience. Every interaction we have with others is through some form of communication, conscious or subconscious. Both can be learned and altered, and how we execute on that determines the relationships we have with others. Discipline is a favorite of mine because it seems to be lacking from American culture. The majority of people in this country can have and do whatever they want in life, and yet most seem to choose easy, convenient things that do not produce the best outcome. A great example would be fast food. Absolutely terrible for you but about 40% of Americans consume fast food every single day. They must know better, yet for taste and convenience they consistently choose the worse option. The discipline to eat vegetables and cook your own meals in the face of constant, convenient sugar leads to a more positive life outcome, and this logic toward discipline can be applied to all facets of life. |
| What is the funniest thing ever to happen to you? | This is more of something I did than something that happened to me, but junior year of college I was taking a graduate level statistics course. It so happened that halfway through the course a few NFL scouts told my head football coach they were coming to visit me in the next few weeks. I dropped all my schoolwork and started training harder than ever. Going into the final of that class I had a B but hadn’t done a single thing the second half of the course and thus bombed the final. My roommates and I were discussing our test grades and my roommate, laughing at my poor performance, said “Dude, that’s 3 standard deviations below the average.” I responded, stone faced, “Three and a half, but who’s counting?” |
| If time and money were not an issue, where would you travel and why? | I’ve already made an elaborate plan to make this happen! I’d start in New Zealand exploring the major cities and back country, then hop to Australia to do the same. From there I’d go up to Southeast Asia, namely Vietnam and Singapore. After that I’d travel through Europe: Budapest, Italy, and Greece to explore my heritage, and too many other places to name. Iceland is also on the list, as is Madagascar and some South American countries. |
| When and if you ever have children, what would you like to pass on to them? | I would want to pass on my adventurous spirit, curiosity, and conviction. I love that I’m comfortable being uncomfortable, and fundamentally accept that life is too short to not take risks. Continuously growing is the best part of life, and you only do so by getting out of your comfort zone and exploring. My curiosity is part of that, in that I always want to find more and better. The world is a big place with endless opportunities to learn and adventure, and my desire to explore that is rooted in my curious nature. With conviction, I’ve made numerous choices that go against societal convention or the thoughts of those I love and respect, and it has worked out incredibly well for me. I’ve gone in with an idea or plan and in the face of everyone telling me no, I’ve persisted, always to find my thesis correct. It’s not easy to do things like move, change jobs, or take major risks when society and everyone important in your life is telling you to do the opposite but I’ve held conviction in my thoughts, and it’s been the correct move every time thus far. |
