I was born in Flint, Michigan, lived in Linden, Michigan for a few years then moved on to Fenton, Michigan in 3rd grade. From 3rd grade on I lived and grew up in Fenton. High School was where some of the most interesting and life changing events occurred, such as being a freshman, getting picked on, those are the lighter events of my high school career. The one event though that changed things 100% for me was the death of my mother when I was 15 a sophomore in high school. I learned a lesson few ever have to, I learned what it was like to loose someone close to you, for me it was my mom. That September 16th is one that will never leave my mind. Looking back at those first few years after her death, it's amazing that I made it through. I made a lot of great friends and learned a lot of new things. Its funny how people seem to respect you more when they see you go through a situation such as myself. Maybe its because they realize that if in the same situation they may have not been able to handle it? Who knows, however through the loss of my mother things started to become clear to me what I wanted to do for a career. The following year is where I realized what it was that I wanted to do with my life. I was introduced to the skill center in Flint, Michigan. They had a program about art- art always being a passion to me. I recall countless hours sitting with my mom watching her paint, weave baskets etc. She had a great talent for that. Which it was lucky enough to have worn off on me. When I found out that I could go to school for art I was ecstatic, who would not be? So for the last 2 years of my high school career I went there in a program called Visual Communications. There I learned a lot of the basics about design, photography, illustration, as well as many software programs listed in my resume, which is available online. When it came for choosing where to attend college, I knew that I wanted to enroll in a school which had an art major and in Michigan. Though I'd like to live in Virginia or North Carolina, Michigan will work for now. I found out through a tip at the skills center in Flint, that Western Michigan University and Ferris State University were looking to either buy Kendall, or at least become associated with them. I knew that Kendall was well known in the art world. After a few weeks, through exposure as the skills center, it was finally determined that Kendall would be associated with Ferris State University. So that is where I hoped aboard at. Ferris State University, I had said all along that I wanted to be out on my own away from the town of Fenton. To have a clean start, Ferris defiantly offered that to me! My grandparents to this day will not let me forget what I told them as they got ready to leave "I wanted to get away from everyone but this is ridiculous! I don't know anyone." Looking back now I laugh at that every time. Ferris has become a second home to me. So many great things happened for me there. I met some great friends as well as met my girlfriend. As things would have it nothing goes as it planned. I went through 2 years of Visual Communications at Ferris then it came time to choose to go to Kendall for the last two or not. Well the choice was made for me that I was not to. So what to do? I took a year and got a bulk of my general education courses done, all the while reading about new majors at Ferris. When I came upon New Media Printing & Publishing, it had just started up a semester before I joined. Nothing like getting in on something new. Its a great degree. Graduation day, I am done... sort of! I just have to complete an internship for 11 weeks on the job and a couple of courses and its all official. That's where I will leave my past off at for now.