I didn't go to college right away after high
school. I wasn't ready in a lot of ways. So
after high school I floated around a bit just
trying to figure out what I wanted to do,
um, for around a year. Then I figured out
moving to New York, New York City, would be,
I don't know, something good would happen.
Uh, so I just picked up and I moved there,
alone, I found a job very shortly after I
moved there apprenticing as a mechanic at
a Mercedes Benz shop. I ended up reading a
book, not thinking much of it. It was just
a popular physics book, there's a lot of them
out there about physicists who write for the
masses. And I remember reading this book and
thinking this, the motive thought that physicists
use, the way they investigate the world, and
think about it, I was completely in sync with
the way they were thinking. It was a feeling
I kind of knew right away. That this is something
I wanted to study and get good at and just
like be a part of this world. I would work
full shifts as a mechanic from hours like
seven in the morning to five and then I would
hop on the subway, go into Manhattan and go
to night school for like three hours. I did
this like five days a week. At the very end
of my tenure as a mechanic when I was ready
to quit and transfer to a university, I had
about maybe a year and a half of actual college
credits under my belt. So now I'm based at
CERN. I'm doing my PhD with the University
of Florida. Here, I'm living now in Geneva,
Switzerland. And my focus is doing experimental
high-energy physics. I knew not to take this
time for granted, or to waste any. I knew
I had one chance of like going through this
and getting into a graduate program, so I
really appreciated it, the opportunity that
I had, like, used every moment I could.
