Pat: the Early Years
I was born on November 12th, 1969, in Huntington, West Virginia, where my parents still reside. My dad is a retired bedding plant manager; he graduated from Marshall University by means of the GI Bill after having fought in World War II with the First Marine Division. My mother attended the University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Art Academy; she is an artist who paints in watercolors. Our house is in the Westmoreland community of Huntington, and I graduated from the now non-existant Vinson High School (also taking night classes at Marshall) in 1988.
I kept busy in high school, playing baseball and soccer, running track, and playing alto sax in the marching, pep and concert bands known as the Band of Pride. I was a member of the National Honor Society, a National Merit Finalist, attended Mountaineer Boys' State and the West Virginia Scholars' Academy, and was both "Mr. Spanish" (meaning something like I had the highest final exam score) and president of the Spanish club. I remember going to band practice right after school (for the second practice of the day), then playing in soccer games at night, coming home and eating dinner at something like 10 o'clock and then doing homework on many occasions. I don't know how I did it then...I wish I could keep up that kind of pace now!
Other than that, I just had a lot of great times with my friends. Here are some of us at a party: Jon Blatt, Aimee Waugh, moi, Gary Foose, Dave Thompson and Kathy Oshel.
College Days
I then attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. I marched in the Spirit of Gold band and played in the pep band, which allowed me to meet a lot of great people, see a lot of great basketball games, and see a lot of not-so-great football games. Just like high school. I played a good bit of paintball with my good pal Yash Patil and hung around with a lot of the Naval ROTC guys.
I started pre-med (since I had no idea there was anything else) but ironically switched to majoring in Russian when I decided I didn't want to stay in school that long. I'd always been pretty gung ho about science in high school so I began to miss that in my Russian studies. Late in my junior year I stumbled upon a Linguistics course, realized this had both science and language study, and then crammed in a bunch of courses to get a minor in Linguistics. I lived on the Russian Hall of McTyeire International House for 3 years. Sadly, there is no Russian hall any more. We were one of the most tight-knit and cliquish of the halls (others being at the time Portuguese, French, German and Spanish) and we had the best parties on campus. I was in a Marine officer commissioning program until I got disqualified for my eyesight (good enough to enlist but not to go straight to OCS) and for a while I was on the pistol & rifle team (with the third highest qualifying score with the M16 too, I might add). I also managed to waste a good deal of time gaming with my friends Dave Myers, Jamie Tarpley, Kevin Freeman and Julie Keeton. Anyway, my last two years went pretty well academically, with me consistently being on the Dean's List.
Grad School and Beyond
Upon graduation in 1992, I started grad school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I taught Linguistics 30: Introduction to Language from 1992 until 1999; I got my Master's in Linguistics in 1995 and my Ph.D. in 2004.
My son Kieran was born on November 14th, 2001. You can find pictures of him here.
From 1994 to 2000, I worked as a Technical Trainer at the ATN Training Center at UNC, teaching computer classes, and also doing some Windows system administration.
Then I was an Instructional Technology Specialist for the Graduate School at Duke University, where I developed a certification program for graduate students in the use of technology in teaching.
My hobbies include computers (especially Macs), having a couple of beers (especially Guinness) while talking with my friends, gaming, volleyball, softball, music and reading.