First Post!

(My cousin and I: summer 2008)

I am the oldest of 5 kids in my family with 3 younger brothers and a younger sister. I am originally from Seattle, WA but moved out to Missoula to go to college. I have a very strong interest in technology. I love most sports with Seattle teams dominating my favorites, but my favorite sport is Mixed Martial Arts. I love the challenge, the competition and the strategy behind 2 people stepping in to the ring or cage to fight. I am also very interested in real estate opportunities and hope that one day my real estate investments will support myself and my family. The summer after freshman year I purchased a home near the University. The house was definitely one of my biggest decisions but has turned out to be a great situation for me. I love Missoula and am very happy about my choice to go to UM. However, right up until the point that I visited UM it was not even on my radar of places to attend school.

I originally wanted to go to the University of Washington but ended up changing my decision after visiting and seeing class sizes of over 900 students. After deciding that the UW undergrad program was not right for me I was left with little direction on where I wanted to go. I had never been to the state of Montana before and was slightly skeptical when my friends parents convinced us to go and visit UM. After seeing the campus and visiting a few classes I knew right away that it was the place for me. I am extremely thankful to this day that they convinced us to visit Missoula.

Initially when coming to school I was not sure what I was going to major in. I knew that I would end up at the business school but was not sure exactly what I would specialize in. First I was thinking either Management or Marketing, however after acing my first accounting test I changed my major on a whim to accounting. I have done a Management internship and a finance internship and am hopefully going to be doing an IS internship with KPMG this summer. Everything changed after I took IS270 with Dr. Firth. Before 270 I really hadno clue what IS was, however after hearing about the goals of the program and seeing that the IS faculty were really geared towards applying concepts to the real world I did not have any more doubts about the choice of my major. I think that IS really fits me, because I enjoy learning about technology and seeing how its trends affect the direction of the business world.