I was born in Texas, but moved around a lot before settling in Gardnerville, Nev., from 1st grade through high school.

The only undergraduate program I ever applied to was UNLV. I grew up an hour drive from Reno, and literally every single one of my friends went there for college. I wanted the opportunity for a fresh start and the challenge of a new environment, so I went to the other in-state university.

2008 with a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematical sciences and 2010 with a Master of Science degree in mathematical sciences with an emphasis in pure mathematics.

I dual majored in math and English, but found myself unable to miss out on any math classes being offered each semester. I would take five math classes and one English/philosophy class, and eventually I dropped the second major. Originally I started in math thinking it was sort of the ‘ultimate intellectual challenge,' but I found it to be boring and repetitive for the first year. It wasn't until I took my first 400-level class (Real Analysis taught by Dr. Hossein Tehrani), that I became fascinated by the challenge math offered.

If you've read Thinking Fast and Slow, the human brain is built to loosely connect patterns and offer intuitive leaps of judgment. These are unconscious processes. Logic and calculation generally require great effort, focus, and conscious thought. I think that training your brain to apply logic more rigorously and consistently is fairly unnatural and off-putting to most people. It's mentally draining at first and requires a lot of training.

I work for Full Spectrum Laser here in Las Vegas. The company builds and sells laser cutters and laser-based 3D printers. I mostly write software for the 3D printers. Generally I get to do what I consider the interesting code work – write the more sophisticated and mathematical algorithms necessary to process 3D models for 3D printing. For example, I wrote code to hollow out models before printing and fill that hollow region with an octahedral lattice of thin beams to prevent the hollowed model from collapsing. I also wrote code to generate a tree of interconnected supports to hold up models from below during printing.

UNLV rounded out a lot of my rough edges. I lived on campus for three years and gained a diverse group of great friends. That taught me how to get along with, and enjoy the company of all kinds of people. Being a teacher in my graduate program prepared me to speak in front of investors, program managers, and conferences. Obviously the coursework taught me enough to get started in the workplace, but most of the knowledge I gained is used only indirectly to help me gain new knowledge, as I need it.

No matter what major you're in, take a computer science class. If you're a STEM major, take five. Every physicist, chemist, electrical engineer, mathematician, and statistician I know writes code almost daily. Most geologists, economists, mechanical engineers, and other engineers I know write code at least occasionally as well.

I generally keep busy and sometimes have to give up a hobby as I pick up more. Lately I've been doing a lot of softball, rock climbing, walleyball, cowboy dancing, and hiking. I occasionally golf, play video games, play pub trivia, and travel.

A question I heard a lot as an instructor at UNLV was, "When will we ever use this?" For example, one of the least obviously useful classes offered in math programs is Abstract Algebra. In Abstract Algebra, you learn about groups, rings, and fields – all of which are abstract generalizations of addition and multiplication. I don't think I've ever directly used Abstract Algebra, but I've benefitted from it almost every day. I didn't fully understand calculus until I had Real Analysis. I still barely understand Linear Algebra (which I use every day), but what I do understand mostly came to me after having studied Abstract Algebra. It's a lot like how I had no idea what verb conjugation is or when/how it is used in English until I learned Spanish.

Also, the more you learn, the easier it becomes to learn the next thing. Universities can't evolve fast enough to teach most of what we are likely to directly use in our jobs, but they can teach us enough that taking the last few steps ourselves becomes a lot easier.