I wanted to go to the best possible college that would make me filthy rich. Worked out well. I got denied by a lot of good schools, and I went to Willamette. I figured out [in] my junior year that I had the opportunity to be a teaching assistant for economics, and I liked economics a lot. I had the opportunity to be a teaching assistant during my junior year in undergrad, and it was a great experience; I loved it. So when I graduated, I was trying to figure out, ‘Do I want to continue a degree further in economics, or do I want to go into teaching?’ My dad was a school administrator my whole life growing up, so I had all this experience of knowing teachers and school people my whole life; it was my parents’ social scene, and I was like, ‘they all seem quite happy and I enjoy teaching, so maybe that’s what’s for me.’

“I love being here. I love being able to work with high school students. [Even though] high schoolers are frustrating at times… it’s fun for me to find new ways to present complex ideas in a manner that’s digestible for a distracted mind. My goal is to continue to try to understand people better and recognize that I am dealing with 16- 17- and 18-year olds who maybe their biggest interest is not school or economics, and so how do I find ways to meet them where they are, and still help them get better at something that we think is important that they learn; if that means we find games to play or find other ways to be interactive, I will latch on to that always. I don’t want people to come in here and go, ‘That class is such drudgery, I hate walking into that room,’ because I know! I’ve been in classes that were complete and utter drudgery, and I don’t want to be that person who perpetuates that.

One of my formative moments in college was just how much reading I had to do. The high school education I got didn’t prepare me well for that step and so I’ve always had in my mind [that] I want students to do more reading when they’re in school so that if they’re taking that next step to continue their education, they’ll be more ready than I was.

“Economics [is a] really valuable lens in seeing the world; most of our education does not touch on it. We kind of know politics because we watch elections and we know these movements that take place in society, but economics is a different way to understand things and make sense of the world around us.