I talked to a few schools about playing football, but I had already pretty much made my mind up. I fell in love with baseball at a young age, and I knew that that's what I wanted to do.
In high school, my English teacher Celeste McMenamin introduced me to the great novels and Shakespeare and taught me how to write. Essays, poetry, critical analysis. Writing is a skill that was painful then but a love of mine now.
Christine Bass was my high school music teacher. She took a program on its last legs and within a few years turned into one of the best programs in the country. Our high school dominated national choir competitions all through her 20-plus year tenure.
In graduate school, Aubrey Berg at the Cincinnati Conservatory gave me the chance to perform with the best in the country in Broadway caliber productions.
I've actually started a number of businesses in my career. So I'm 28 currently, but when I was about 16, I started building Websites, and that's how I put myself through school. I went to Duke with a degree in electrical engineering, computer science, computer engineering, and then to Princeton.
I'm typically a 'just drink water' kind of guy. I was a bodybuilder in high school, so I used to - food to me was, 'there are this many grams of carbohydrates and proteins, and I need these micronutrients in order to grow and be fit,' and I ate in order to live and not live in order to eat, and I think most people are the opposite.
Doo-wop is the true music to me, man. Doo-wop was what nurtured me and grew me into who I am, and I guess even when I was in school, the teacher probably thought I had ADD or something every day, because I'd be beating on the desks, singing like the Flamingos or the Spaniels or Clyde McPhatter or somebody.
I was very driven in high school. I worked a bunch of odd jobs. I never partied. I never drank. I was just a theater geek who was obsessed with movies.
Yeah, I left Idaho at 17. You know, I graduated high school a year early and just, you know, the typical story, packed up my car and moved out.
I was on the snowboard team at my school, but that was the only sports team I was on. I played soccer growing up in elementary school.
