After graduating from high school, I spent four years in the US Marines, which included a five-month deployment to the Middle East during Operation Desert Storm. I moved to Fargo, ND, in 1991 and began attending school at MSUM. I graduated in December 1998, with a BA in English Writing and a minor in Music and stayed on at MSUM for graduate school, teaching Freshman English there for two years as a TA while earning an MFA in Creative Writing in May 2001. From there, I moved to Long Beach, CA, and after teaching English composition for awhile at the college level as an adjunct professor, I decided (with some trepidation, because I remembered what a horrible student I was in high school), to try teaching high school English. I now work at Ribet Academy, a small private college prep school in Los Angeles.