About Me

Now I could talk about myself for days on end, but I wouldn't want to clutter up my poor brother's server with useless information about my eating habits (among other things), so I'll just give you just the basics.

I am living in Memphis, Tennessee and attending Rhodes College in the pursuit of a liberal arts degree. I'm a psychology major and possibly a philosophy minor. I don't know for sure what I want to do when I grow up, but I think I'd enjoy being a wildlife photographer, a political journalist, or an astrophysicist. You'll probably notice that none of those things have much to do with psychology, but I have diverse interests. After all, that's why I chose to attend a liberal arts institution.

I was raised in a small town called Carrboro, North Carolina, which is continuous with the rather larger town called Chapel Hill, North Carolina, which is home to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Many, many people have asked me why I didn't go to UNC; indeed, I didn't even apply. There are two answers. The first has to do with its proximity to my home. I was born at UNC Hospital, scarce minutes away from where students at UNC attend classes. When it came time to go to school, I wanted a place that would let me leave my hometown. It's not that I was trying to flee my obnoxious parents or that I lived in a boring town; it's just that I wanted new surroundings. The other reason has to do with the size of the school. UNC has an undergraduate enrollment of 16,764. Rhodes has a total enrollment (it only has undergraduates) of 1,689. These numbers are different, and they reflict differences in the colleges themselves, too. Rhodes has a tight-knit collegiate environment. Everyone knows many people on the campus, but there are still plenty of people to know. The most meaningful difference, though, is found in professor-student interactions. Instead of being a face among thousands, students at small colleges develop relationships with many of their professors, fueling both personal and intellectual developement. These attributes are the reasons I chose a small-college education.

At Rhodes, I am employed as an RA. This year, I have the pleasure of working with first-year students, and I genuinely couldn't be more excited about it. I like working with RAs, and I think I've grown a great deal as a person as a result of being one myself.

My parents are both really cool people, a psychologist and an attorney. They live in Carrboro still, filling the emotional space I left when I left for college. As for the physical space I occupied, it is being preserved exactly as it is, a shrine to my existence. Or more accurately, it's being kept for when I come back for me to live in.

My brother is 27 and holds a degree in computer science. He is currently living and working in Charlotte. He has a lovely apartment, two cats (Toulouse and Dakota), an Xbox 360, and lots of light. He works hard and earns good money, and I think he's genuinely happy with his life right now.

But this isn't about him.

I enjoy the theatre a great deal. In high school I participated in every play that Hanes Theatre produced, a feat unmatched by any other than myself and Tamsin Green, who is one of the most gifted theatre people I know. Of course, when I say I "participated" I don't mean that I was on stage by any means. Quite the contrary: for all but two of those plays I worked behind the scenes, either as a lighting or sound technician, a stagehand, or on the stage management team. At Rhodes, when possible, I've continued to work behind the scenes for theatre, most recently by designing the lighting for the McCoy Theatre's production of Agnes of God.

However, theatre is not the extent of my abilities or interests. I also enjoy singing, and I'm a member of the auditioned Rhodes Singers here at college. I also participated in chorus in high school.

More academically, I'm interested in almost everything. If you give me an interesting instructor, I can be interested in anything. I really can see myself doing any of a huge number of things with my career. I'm sure that I'll end up choosing something incredibly awesome, but beyond that I don't know much about where I'll find myself.

A recurring dream of mine for many years has been to become a wildlife videographer, to capture footage of animals living in nature and doing normal animal things (eating each other, having sex, climbing stuff...you know, those kinds of things). I enjoy photography and nature, and I would enjoy traveling the world and being in the natural habitats of some of the world's most amazing creatures.

Something that defines my existence for many of the people who know me is my ability to solve Rubik's Cubes. I got one for Christmas a few years back, read the little booklet that came with it, and started solving. After a time, I memorized the parts of the booklet that I didn't already know and started to become faster and faster at solving it. My current fastest time is one minute and seven seconds, but I don't often time myself. The most famous time I solved it was for a special Cabaret act at the 2002 UNC Music Camp. Some people are aware of my existence only through that act. Kind of a pathetic legacy, if you ask me. I can't tell you how tired I am of hearing "Stephen! Do the Rubik's Cube!!! [they start to sound really pitiful here] Pleeeease?!?"

So there you have it. All you ever wanted to know about me. Probably some stuff you don't really care about. Maybe a whole page full of stuff you don't care about. But leave if you don't like it here. I'm not keeping you. Heck, I won't even know if you leave.