I am a generalist software engineer. I have been applying my craft to one of my lifelong hobbies - video games - at Electronic Arts in Austin. When I am not helping to create them, I enjoy playing video games, reading long form essays and books, listening to a fairly wide range of music, watching a similarly broad range of movies, running, and cooking things that didn't start as or from animals.
Once upon a time I wanted to be an academic, initially a physicist. I grew up all over the place in a military family, graduating from a Jesuit high school in Phoenix, Arizona, and went on to Georgetown University. I double majored in Physics and Math but realized late in the day that I didn't enjoy much of the day-to-day of being a physics academic. I switched gears to a slightly different track, Philosophy of Science, and found myself upon graduation in the History and Philosophy of Science PhD program at Notre Dame University. A year and a half later I found myself having similar misgivings about a life in Philosophy academia.
Taking a page out of Plato, I sat down to reflect on what I really enjoyed and was passionate about. The answer, programming, led me to USC's Computer Science Master's program and my lifelong hobby of video games helped refine my course of study. Two years and a degree later, I made the jump to the video games industry. For all its turbulence, I am extremely grateful for and happy with what I do.