My sophomore year in high school was full of game changers for me. First I started to grow. My kids have heard this story, but my freshman year I started at 5’1’’ and 100 pounds. I think I was 5’6’’ when I finished my sophomore year – for context that is smaller than Carter now. Unfortunately, I lacked the talent and physical abilities to make any of the JV teams so I became a basketball and baseball manager with a focus on keeping statistics for both varsity teams. These jobs taught me valuable skills – attention to details, organization and multi-tasking which have all been life long skills that have helped me throughout my business career. The one sport I did continue to compete at a varsity level through high school was cross country, and like Elizabeth has a continued to be my primary exercise through my adult life.
After a few weeks of keeping stats, I merged my passion for technology with stats, and I started keeping all the stats in spreadsheets and identifying interesting trends for the coaches. This was the year that I concluded that something in Technology would be my career, and obviously led me to Purdue for my Computer Science undergraduate degree.
That was also the year I learned to drive, and it was much easier than Grant’s experience since I didn’t have to deal with Atlanta traffic while learning a valuable new skill. Jump in my grandpa’s old Ford Truck and drive down a county dirt road. It was a manual transmission – a lost art nowadays, and required my driving skill. And we had no phones with “Google Maps” so maps were a necessity to get from point A to point B!
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