“I grew up in Beaverton. I went to Beaverton High School. Kind of Raleigh Hills area, so sort of East Beaverton. From there I went to college, first to BYU, and then I went to Willamette College of Law. And then I went to PSU for a master’s in history. And then most recently during COVID, I did Arizona State Online, another master’s in history specializing in war, military history.

I liked law school, I didn’t really like actually doing it. I worked at the Department of Justice. It’s the Oregon Department of Justice, so the state, not the federal. I was pretty young and the hours were really long and a number of things happened. My grandparents passed away. left me enough money and use of a house. I just wanted to do something else.

I kind of went to law school just because I thought I wanted to make more money. But then I also realized that money isn’t that great if you don’t have time to enjoy it. And I wasn’t going to have time to enjoy it because we were working really long hours.

But then I met the woman who is now my wife. And she was tied to Oregon. And I kind of just needed a job. And so I went and I talked to the dean of the education school at PSU. He had also been a lawyer who then became a teacher. So he helped me check off all these requirements to get a secondary teaching license.

I only applied to a couple of districts that I thought were at a high level. So West Linn and Lake Oswego. I got offered a job here, so here I am. I’ve been teaching here since 2000, so 25 years.

I think that television and films over-glamorize being a lawyer, because a lot of it is grueling. Especially when you’re a beginner, it’s pretty dull. I’ve told people that it’s long stretches of drudgery and boredom, punctuated by brief moments of terror.

You’re just grinding through material and assembling. And it’s not very exciting and it takes a tremendous amount of time. And you might make more money, but you might not. There’s a lot of lawyers that don’t make a ton.

I founded Model UN here, so I’ve been doing that the whole time. I am also the advisor right now for the JSU, the Jewish Student Union. A couple of times over the course of my time here, I’ve been an advisor for a ham radio club.

Ham radio or amateur radio is a hobby where you learn about electronics, you have to get a license from the federal government, and then you’re not a broadcaster in the sense that you’re sending out a radio station for any listener. You’re trying to make point-to-point communications over radios with people around the world. I’ve talked to people in about 165 radio countries.”