- Chem PhD, 2016, focus on polymer chemistry
- worked ~5 years in the ink and coating industry as synthetic polymer chemist
- moved in Jan 2022 to cosmetics and personal care, i'm now in upstream formulation of skincare-makeup hybrids
- hail from NJ, got BS in Chem from Rowan University in 2011
- thought i wanted to be a chemical engineer, turns out i liked solving problems with chemistry instead of solving problems about chemistry
- i do not have a good almost-arrested story, although VT police did kick me out of Lane Stadium at night the week of the spring game because me and some friends were playing ultimate frisbee on worsham field
- other interests i have include disc golf, smoking meat, walking
- my brother and i are slowly working through a 50 states bucket list, strongly featuring national parks
- i am newly engaged (memorial day weekend!) and definitely will be marrying up, future mrs chumps is a gem
Ask away, i will come back to these a little later on in the day
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and big birthday shoutout to hokietopher, who also had the idea for these AMAs. I got the next round buddy 🙂
Thanks GGC - Really nice meeting you yesterday! Congrats again on the engagement!
What's your favorite meat smoking tool/accessory? Could be something as big as your your preferred smoker, or something as small as your go to meat thermometer, or something as random as an umbrella you use when it rains mid-smoke.
i use a pit barrel cooker, basically just a 30-gal ugly drum. my favorite accessory is Thermopro TP20 wireless dual probe thermometer -- can check temp of two items, or what i typically do is let one probe hang free to get smoker temp and use the other to monitor the meat
also pink butcher paper >>>>> aluminum foil
Excellent on both.
I have the exact same setup. Been running it since the pit barrel came out. On my second one. I feel like I'm in a pyramid scheme given how many I've sold and how little income it's made me.
Congratulations on the engagement!
What's the soundtrack to your life?
How many states have you crossed off of your bucket list?
Favorite park/destination so far? Which one are you most excited about?
thank you!
i listen to a lot of lo fi beats, lately a lot of modern funk (vulfpeck and the like), and also a lot of hymns.
it will be
3435 by the end of summer (currently2930)i answered some of my favorites further down. it's not a NP but i have always wanted to do to Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas and try my luck looking for diamonds
Whats your favorite NJ Disc golf course?
Favorite disc in your bag?
FYI - My brother was instrumental in building the Greystone Woods course, and performs much of the maintenance there with the help of other volunteers. He's also being inducted to the NJ Disc Golf Hall of Fame this year for his 40 years of contributions to the sport.
i'm partial to thompson park in monroe twp (middlesex county) -- the one at Oak Ridge Park in Clark is pretty nice and new, just needs some updated signage and real tee pads. the layout is good though
my favorite disc is an innova star beast
My brother was involved in designing and building Oak Ridge too. I haven't played in a while. Used to do Tuesday night luck of the draw doubles at the Rutgers Cook Douglas course in New Brunswick. Thompson Park is just 15 minutes away from me.
At what point in your career do you go all Breaking Bad
never, small molecule synthesis is the worst. i got out of synthesis in general because i didnt wanna work with the nasty stuff
Is chemistry still a majority female field? Would you agree that the odds are good but the goods are a little odd?
Chemistry was never been a majority female field when I was working in it!
Edit: now Biochemistry was more male:female balanced. But I'd never heard anyone say chemistry as a whole was majority female. Is that new data?
Purely anecdotal. I just remember seeing a "why to be a Chem major" tee shirt. One of the list was "55:45 girl:guy ratio. The odds are good but the goods are a little odd". Come to think of it, it may have been a chemical engineering shirt
That's what they say about Georgia Tech undergraduate, which I last checked (back in the day), was a 6:1 male:female ratio.
im not aware of chemistry being majority female
the worst people i met in chemistry were all men. the women put up with a lot of nonsense.
Amen. At my company there's many exceptional women and a ton of the most mediocre dudes (especially with the handful of married couples here). All of the "problem children" are men that are incredibly pleased with themselves that are impossible to work with.
I go out of my way to share opportunities with my women colleagues when they present themselves because I know that they have to fly to what most dudes can walk to.
How did you meet your fiancée? Any tips to fellow engineering types that may be out there for hoodwinking quality women into marriage? happily married myself but I figured I'd ask for the general populace
hinge lmao modern problems dot gif
basically i was out of the game for a long time for a variety of reasons -- i think a lot of people look to relationships to satisfy or fulfill them and hearing No can really take its toll. so they lower standards and find themselves stuck in nothing exciting. i was a pretty self-absorbed person who had a lot of growing up to do, but i knew that and i waited til after i had worked on myself to get into dating.
there's no magic hoodwink quality -- the right person will appreciate you for who you are without projecting a future potential version of you onto you. Future Mrs Chumps loves learning even more than i do, but she's also incredibly personable. our first few dates were awkward but genuine, and we've just kept going on them
How did you propose?
We went camping in Acadia NP over Memorial Day weekend with some dear friends of ours. Saturday the 27th was our second anniversary, i had the ring with me on the trip. (my friends knew) I didn't really have a ~plan~ as much as i just wanted to be prepared to propose when the time was right. Had the ring in the box in my backpack all day Saturday and the moment didn't come. We all kept talking about what a perfect lovely day it was, but it was one of those days where everything we did was an 8-9/10 and because everything was excellent, it was a 10/10 day -- but there was no 10/10 moment
I didn't sleep great saturday night and the sun rises early in Acadia and the birds come out etc etc, so i would up getting out of bed and out of the tent into the campsite around 5 am on Sunday. Future Mrs Chumps got up around 5:30. Typically when we go visit friends or whatever we go for an early morning walk because we're both early risers and it's an easy way to ease into the day and to kill time before everyone else is up. So she suggested a walk, i agreed and went to get my sneaks, my phone, and the ring.
We walked down to the water, she suggested we go out onto the rocks. She was ahead of me and went to a spot on the rocks that looked like a perfect lil chair to sit down and take in the view -- when she sat down and turned towards me, i was on a knee and asked her to marry me and she said yes! Right around 6 am, not another soul in in sight or in mind.
what were you gonna do if she said no? push her in the water?
/s
i kid, i kid. I proposed to my wife at the top of a cliff and that was the question my brothers asked when I showed them the spot
she definitely wasnt gonna say no, i am a total delight
but in all honesty, the question itself should never be a surprise, but the setting of the question could be. the answer to the question should be something you've already talked about
1000%
honestly, with my ex and I, I don't remember any actual "proposal" lol- more a mutual "so when are we getting married?"
"We went camping in Acadia NP ..." That is all you need to know.
ive been to acadia about half a dozen times now, never disappoints
Awesome setting, I was at Acadia last summer. Beautiful area. We were over on the Schoodic Peninsula
As a follow NJ chemist, have to ask:
Favorite NJ diner and NJ diner food?
Best chem lab story (flood, fire, detonation, etc.)?
What makes apparently smart people be dumb enough to get a Ph.D.?
mexican panini with side of sour cream and well done fries from Park Place Diner in Aberdeen NJ
the best/worst lab story was at my last job where the temp spilled toluene diisocyanate outside of the hood and lied about it and then my boss backed her instead of me. easy to want to leave poor management. another awesome part of being a scientist is that it's great when you get corroborating data to support a hypothesis. in grad school, i had some x-ray scattering and microtomed AFM data that suggested but didn't outright prove evolution of microstructure in films. worked with the folks over at the NCFL to get some really baller TEM data is proved without a shadow of a doubt and let me publish in a much higher impact journal. that was a good day
in terms of phd -- getting a phd is the worst, having a phd is awesome! i knew i wanted to do science, i knew i wanted to be on a higher level technical track and not bump into an education ceiling on my career track. Masters wouldnt have gotten me where my phd has. some phds are dumb no doubt -- and i also dont understand why anyone would want to sign up for the rat race of academia
Favorite National Park? And have you visited Katmai? Its #1 on my list of NP's to visit.
so far, i really liked yellowstone and yosemite, although they are very different
yellowstone i geeked tf out bc it's so STRANGE. it's like stepping into calvin and hobbes Spaceman Spiff strip. it's basically mars. like my feeble brain did not have the capability to process or contextualize what i was seeing because it was so different. plus the wildlife! Elk! Deer! Bison!
Yosemite was awesome bc the view of the valley with El Cap and Half Dome is incredible. We hiked the 4 Mile trail from valley floor up to Glacier Point, 3000+ ft elevation gain over 4.7 miles. switchback city, incredible payoff to get into an area of the park that was closed to car traffic
Two other really cool moments stand out to me -- going to Grove of the Patriarchs in Mt Rainier NP only bc someone on TKP recommended it and geeking out at the massive trees. That was my first introduction to Big Trees and wow i was so in awe. just incredible. The other awesome moment was in Acadia NP and the story is upthread in a reply to LancerHokie
i have not been to Katmai (or to AK)
East and West Yellowstone are so different. Just visited in May, great trip.
the road out towards mt washburn was closed when we went, but we had such an amazing trip regardless
What is your perfect burger configuration (bread, meat, toppings, etc.)?
i'm not picky tbh
but if i have to make the perfect burger, give me a nice brioche bun, lightly toasted. give me a good meat blend, chuck/brisket/etc, probably ~6 oz. give me a bunch of caramelized onions, colby jack, lettuce, and tomato. hold the sauce/condiments, the perfect burger is juicy enough to not need one, and the onions are probably buttery enough to suffice
top 3 TKP posters IYO
bottom 3 TKP posters IYO
how did you get into TKP moderation anyhow?
how much time do you spend monitoring our hallways?
What is your go-to page on TKP?
And why is Shockwave the #1 bottom TKPer?
beats me, i don't remember that incident just by the commenter name
The commenters that are "best" are the ones who engage in good faith, don't get annoyed at other people, and construct their arguments well. The ones who are the worst tend to be overly negative 85% of the time and take a contrarian view no matter what's being discussed. The worst commenters don't follow the well-intended guidance from moderators -- that's how MacGruber and Leonard got banned.
Joe fielded nominations for Mod from the community in early 2020. Chris and I were offered individually from there and both agreed. I was hoping Chris would be the other moderator selected from that process.
I don't use TKP any more now that I moderate, i just have to have the antenna up for things going off the rails.
As far as using TKP, i use active discussions and recent comments tabs a lot. Specific threads -- soccer discussion, crootin, Big Perm's restaurant database. good stuff.
bonus answer to a question you didnt ask: i miss comments by Ernest P Worrelford and ThunderingHokie. It was great to see ifishvtiam, Beard, and hokie07me come back after taking breaks.
this was a predictably diplomatic (and boring) answer. but I don't blame you....much
Did ThunderingHokie change his screen name? Or am I thinking of someone else?
thunderinghokie was something like jmarshall01? or something? it was an account that his uncle registered and he took it over
Ah yes. I was trying to find a way to get out to Huntington to catch a game with him pre-Covid.
I miss those guys, too.
Also, Leonard getting banned must have happened during my break, because I remember him being near-universally well-liked. What happened there?
He did not follow the well-intentioned guidance of the moderators and consistently crossed lines and violated CGs during covid discussion threads, but had a "tee hee what are ya gonna do about it, I'm just an old man" attitude. It got old very quickly. Multiple warnings, multiple thread shutdowns, multiple nukes.
ah yep yep that'll do it, and right quick too.
It wasn't even that quick. The moderators were more patient that I would have been (lots of respect to their restraint), and gave him a lot of rope. With which he insisted on hanging himself (figuratively speaking).
it was a really tense time for everyone for obvious reasons, and we all tried our best to be as gracious as possible to as many people as possible. by and large the community did pretty well to be supportive and understanding as there was a lot to figure out and navigate for all of us, especially since everyone's individual situations were different.
It's nice to read this because we were trying to be as patient and lend as much leniency as possible given the unique nature of the circumstances to everyone during that time, but the line had to be drawn somewhere.
Have Dahmer and GGC ever been seen in the same room???
Not that GGC is aware of
oh it was a joke about my glasses
poor attempt, my apologies :(
i was like "wow he's really leaning into the anything part of ask-me-anything" bc i had no clue what would prompt anyone to ask about ted bundy.
but temps at work rag on me about my Dahmer glasses. i think they look good and i'm glad i've had them for the last year and a half or so
My wife picked my current glasses out of 3-5 pair I had narrowed it down to. The first time I put them on said I look like Dahmer. Anyway, I don't know what that says about my taste in eyewear or her taste in life-partners, but I like them. Next time I'm going for Dr. Strangelove glasses.
i never understood the john lennon round-lenses-metal-or-no-frames look. at least aviators as sunglasses have never gone out of style, it was just a matter of time before they came back around into style as prescription eyeglasses
Any dark sky park recommendations?
How far through the 50 state bucket list are you currently?
funnily enough, i've only been to Natural Bridge from this list: https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/parks/
but towards the end of summer, we will hit 7 NPs/5 states on a road trip and all 7 of the NPs are on the list. Flying into and out of Vegas, doing AZ, NM, CO, UT and getting to Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, Canyonlands, Arches, Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, Zion.
after this trip, i'll be at 35/50 and mostly just midwest + AK/HI
If you have the time in the schedule might want to add Canyon De Chelly National Monument. I loved it there. You can either do horseback or jeep tours in with the Navajo guides.
Hello, fellow Jersey Hokie. I've done a similar NP trip in that area. Assuming you take Rt 12 from Capitol Reef to Bryce, try to get to IDK BBQ in Tropic, UT. Food is solid, but the setting is an 11/10.
Also, if you can swing it take some of the BLM roads through Escalante. It'll add time, but unreal scenery in every direction. Cottonwood Canyon Rd, Johnson Canyon Rd, and Hole in the Rock Rd are some of the more major ones.
I loved, LOVED Bryce Canyon. Hike down to the bottom. Its fantastic. The overwhelming mass of people made Zions Majesty less majestic, but it is beautiful. Would love to go back without kids and do some serious hiking.
I've never been there, but if you want dark skies, Great Basin NP in Nevada is supposed to be one of the darkest places in the continental US. Even the opening page highlights the starry skies.
https://www.nps.gov/grba/index.htm
I can't speak to Great Basin, but Chaco Canyon was one of the best starry skies I've ever seen. I also just love New Mexico though, so I'm a little biased.
https://www.nps.gov/chcu/index.htm
Can you formulate a chemical to make us win a national championship in football?
no
Do you get mad when people address you as "Mr."?
Serious question, did you know you wanted to become a PhD or did it take a life of its own?
i get more annoyed when people call me Dr believe it or not. i earned the title and i've earned the right to choose to go by my name. most people i've come across who insist on going by Dr are pompous insecure dingdongs. you can say it once, i'll gently say "if my name is good enough for my mom, it's good enough for me" and then after that i'll get annoyed.
i'm more or less just a regular dude, i just did a lot more school
whatever you say, doc
This made me think of Coming to America
i'm more or less just a regular dude
Can confirm after meeting GGC yesterday.
I've never met a man that has the same name as his Mom.
A day of firsts.
I actually have a friend whose older brother is named Robin after his mom, he went by Robbie/Rob
cool.
Had a lady bus driver named Jackie. Son in high school was named Jackie.
This is funny.
Keep 'em coming.
My cousin's name is Leslie. His daughter's name is Leslie.
He does not go by Leslie.
My grandfather's name was Georgia Rebecca..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOHPuY88Ry4
first, just because I paid for my honorary doctorate doesn't make me a dingdong for making people call me doctor!
second, what did you have to do to earn the right to choose to go by your name?
/s
i was pretty against grad school even going into spring of my Jr year -- just did not like doing school, despite multiple professors telling me i should strongly consider phd programs. but things changed when i started doing research for credit and i realized that i actually love doing lab work. at the same time, i took a polymer chemistry course only because i couldnt take medicinal chemistry due to a scheduling conflict. it sounds dumb but "everything is made of something" ... and polymer chemists can manipulate that "something" at a molecular level and change the properties. change the structure, change the properties. Kevlar and Nomex have the same amount in the same ratio of carbons, hydrogens, oxygens, nitrogens, etc. the only difference is the shape they are arranged -- Kevlar is pretty rigid linear structure, and Nomex has a little kink in the structure. You all might know Kevlar as the stuff they use in body armor and cut proof gloves, etc -- Nomex is what they use in flame retardant suits for firefighters, nascar, etc. but i digress -- that class + research made everything click for me and i decided i really wanted to make a career out of "polymers"
from there it was some frank discussions about career tracks with those professors and frank discussions with my parents about looking into PHD programs etc.
How much is the US consumer cosmetic industry concerned about using materials banned in the EU? Is there a move to go away from them here? If one was interested in investing in companies that are already moving in that direction, are there companies that are way out front, or any that are much father behind, or do all the big brands offer some of both?
should be every one of them, but unfortunately some fast beauty lines pop up that only focus on making a buck now and hoping to be acquired.
the big four cosmetics companies (LOreal, Estee Lauder, Shiseido, and Coty) all pay attention to what's ok in EU. The bigger thing is actually what's OK in China, since CN market >> Europe. However, there is a lot of consumer push to have "clean" cosmetics and the market moves that way anyway.
also it's worthwhile to separate the company from the brand. some companies own multiple brands that the average consumer thinks are competitors -- e.g. Estee Lauder/Clinique, Shiseido/NARS, LOreal Paris/Maybelline are some examples. if you find brands that are pushing "clean", "natural", "sustainable" etc, connect them back to their parent company
Did you do coatings for the HP Indigo ElectroInk?
not me specifically, but my previous company did a lot of work with HP
Have you done much work on water soluble polymers? That's currently what I am working on. It's pretty interesting chemistry.
there's enough obvious info in this thread for you to place me -- you and i definitely overlapped and interacted at least a little bit in real life while we are both at tech, just not in the chemistry context. are you at Gore? Dupont? Ashland? Those are the big ones in Delaware that I know of off the top of my head
anyhow -- i haven't done a lot with water soluble polymers. my previous job had me doing either solvent-based polyurethanes or water-soluble/water dispersible resin materials, but these were mostly modified natural products that were not exactly high MW (rosin esters mostly, some oligosaccharides) that had a pH switch for inks. waterborne when neutralized with ammonia for inks, water resistant after the ammonia flashes off when printed -- trying to replicate performance of the BASF Joncryl acrylic resins with biobased/sustainable products
Solenis. Separated from Ashland a while back, then merged with BASF paper and water division a few years ago. The merger is how I came to the company.
I currently specialize in wet strength resins.
Those sound like some really interesting projects. Biobased usually necessitates a lot of creativity to make it work.
Yeah my previous industry was all about value added products which meant razor thin margins. Really easy to get any two out of "bio based", "performance", and "inexpensive" -- almost impossible to get all three
If you could have lunch with 5 people from tkp, but it has to be all at once, who would it be?
Asssuming it's me plus 5: Joe, Chris, Guitarman, Brad, and CB.vb.VT -- mod squad plus my two irl best friends whom i love dearly and with whom I talk every day but I dont get to see often because I'm in jersey and they're in Nova + 757 respectively
I'm a little surprised TheFifthFuller hasn't made this list yet
I'd be happy to participate in this meal someday.
<3
Can I get a short summary of your thesis? How was your time at grad school? Did you have that year 3 "what the he'll am I doing with my life" inflection point?
The real story of my thesis is that my PI stuck me on so many dead-end, disjointed projects that i had to think for a whole day how on earth i was gonna unite my chapters under one umbrella and write a cohesive intro -- the nice story is that i was always working on stimulus responsive macromolecules -- either polymers or networks. I did some electromechanical actuator work, polymer-ionic liquid composites, some selectively degradable 3d printing stuff, some UV curable stuff.
Like i said upthread, getting a phd is awful, having a phd is awesome. It was bad for my health, i was stressed beyond belief, low key losing my hair, put on a metric f ton of weight from eating takeout/fast food/stress eating, blood pressure was up (but ok now thankfully).
I was pretty close to stopping a few times, it was pretty miserable. But good lab mates and good friends let me talk things out and i stuck through it.
Def went through the "do i really want to do this????" phase
I had a dead-end project too and I'm pretty sure it's a "right of passage" of almost all PhD candidates to go through that inflection point. I definitely had mine, but ended up on the good side of things and in a good career. And luckily minoxidil and topical finasteride can solve the hair-loss issues too.
Do you have a link to any of your publications? I'd like to read what the great GGC has authored.
thankfully the hair loss was just temporary and not like in clumps or anything, just would wash my hair and see dozens of hairs in my hands etc
just the one pub really: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsami.5b09965
you could be enterprising and find my ETD on VT Library website if you really wanted to
Thanks for sharing. I'm not too well-versed in the detailed chemistry described here, but it's pretty interesting to get conductance out of poly acrylic acid. I often see PAA used in hydrogels and other biomedical applications.
The thing is that you neutralize the PAA with the imidazole base, and you get a loose ion pair out of it. If you neutralize with sodium hydroxide or something, the sodium acrylate ion pair is so tightly held that you don't get the same properties.
TKP.....It's educational!!!
I know Little Bobby Tables is gonna do one of these AMAs next, but I'd like to nominate you to do one too!
LBT isn't doing his til next week
Late next week, if not the week after. I'm on a solo motorcycle trip up the north east to see a bunch of baseball games, and won't be back until late Wed night. Which means I'll have lots to catch up on. =^/
That, and the realization that I'm going to have to really dig deep to answer some of these questions. And I can't help but look at these other AMAs and think, "Man, I am / my life is just boring."
Yeah I thought the same thing when vtnerf told me to follow him.
I definitely can and would be happy to.
What's the dumbest thing you have ever done?
Whats the nicest thing you have ever done?
What's your favorite sound?
What's your guilty pleasure?
Whats the oddest/strangest thing you have ever seen happen, where you literally said to yourself: 'I cant believe that just happened right in front of me?
If you could remove one thing from existence in the world, what would be? It could be a person past or present, a thing, an emotion, .....anything.
What's the dumbest thing you have ever done?
Stayed hung up for too long on a girl who hurt me and internalized that rejection as an indictment on me rather than understand that people can want different things and it just is what it is and isn't what it isn't.
Whats the nicest thing you have ever done? someone else would have to answer this for me most likely. i've learned that it's best to honor those around me and treat them how i want to be treated. one more recent thing that comes to mind was being on the phone with my brother on the way home from work and he was having a rough week so i just stayed on the phone and drove to his house instead of my place, surprised him at the front door and gave him a hug. it's the little things, y'know? sometimes people just need a hug.
What's your favorite sound? heavy rain on the roof
What's your guilty pleasure? a pint of ice cream
Whats the oddest/strangest thing you have ever seen happen, where you literally said to yourself: 'I cant believe that just happened right in front of me? not sure it counts as odd or strange, but this one was pretty noteworthy. on our first day in Grand Teton NP. people coming the other way on the String Lake Loop trail told me and my brother that there was a bear off the trail up ahead. so we backed down the trail a bit, making noise, etc. Gave it 15 minutes, slowly started back up the trail -- no we did not have bear spray yet 🤦♂️talk about an adrenaline pump
i also once dropped a pal off to a house party out on Buckshot and turned the corner to see what appeared to be several fratty-type boys fellating each other. Not really my scene, never went back
If you could remove one thing from existence in the world, what would be? It could be a person past or present, a thing, an emotion, .....anything. probably raisins, those things are the worst and make everything else worse
First concert?
Best concert?
Album you've listened to front to back the most times?
Movie you've seen the most times?
First concert?
i remember my parents taking me to see Phillips, Craig, and Dean at a very small local church
Best concert? several in contention: could be Vulfpeck @ MSG (it's on youtube!), could be my first Thrice show (beggars tour, i've seen them a bunch), could be the first Govt Mule show I saw (second one was not so good)
Album you've listened to front to back the most times? who knows man, could be Beggars by Thrice, could be Allman Brothers Live at Fillmore East
Movie you've seen the most times? maybe Forrest Gump, but movie i've intentionally "sat down to watch a movie" and watched the most is probably Kung Fu Hustle
i'm not much of a pop media guy, at this point it's mostly just star wars content and sports -- don't have tv at home aside from some streaming services (that i use mostly for sports and star wars), don't go to the movies often, so on
That really cool. In a former life I used to play drums in a worship band and PCD songs were some of my favorites, especially Revelation Song.
So you did your UG at a non-VT school, then came to VT to do your PhD... Did you have previous connections to VT? You're clearly very much a VT sports fan, was it hard to get into given that you were a post-grad when you arrived?
Also, were you a college football fan when you were younger, or was it something you found when you arrived at VT?
My brother is a VT architecture grad. The family adopted VT for rooting interests in the 2004 season once we knew he was gonna go there. I applied around for Chem E and got into tech but stayed instate and saved a boatload of money, and it worked out because i changed my major out of engineering anyway. And then just so happens that Tech is good in both polymer chemistry and architecture and it made by far the most sense to attend there for grad school.
I grew up going to high school basically in the shadow of Rutgers campus, and they suck, so it was easy to want to root for anyone else.
It was easy to get into tech athletics once i got there -- not only did i already have the rooting interest from my brother, but i also didnt have strong athletics interests from my D3 undergrad school. I had a classmate who was a starter on the football team all four years but i didnt even know he played at all until spring of our junior year. Saw this guy for like 2 classes a semester for almost 3 years and had no clue he was even on the team. Just a different mindset
Favorite non-VT teams?
(There's a follow question coming)
Arsenal, NYG, NYY
I also get ricochet fandom of the Richmond Spiders and West Ham from a good friend.
I love to dunk on Tottenham Hotspur any chance I get. "Philadelphia Sports" was a strong contender for "if i could erase one thing from existence" question
You can only pick one of the following:
Which do you pick, and how easy of a decision is it?
VT Football natty to get the championshipless monkey off the university's back.
It's probably the hardest one to do and the one i feel would require the most external factors to fall just so.
World cup would be neat but the international game doesnt move me that much.
Arsenal UCL would be so nice, but it wouldn't move me as much as a VT natty would given the distance to england and history i have with VT. (Light edit for clarity. Also i would absolutely go to a vt natty, dont know about making it to a ucl)
Also just gonna take a moment to gloat about both the Yanks and the Giants winning multiple titles this century, causing you to swerve them both 😌
Yea I was hoping you were a jets fan to make it more interesting.
Started to give you a leg for picking the Hokies, but reconsidered when you started gloating...
sorry all your teams suck
Not at club sports!
What's the one thing you would want to be remembered for?
Hard for me to answer this without violating CGs regarding religion.
I'll say that i hope to be remembered as someone who gave of my excess and then more on top of that -- my money, my time, my emotional bandwidth, my perspective. CS Lewis had a quote about how the right amount of charity is probably always a little more than we can spare.
Always felt the same way, but in the last several years as I enter the early twilight of my time here on earth,
those thoughts and feelings have only intensified. I've probably done more for others in my life than is financially prudent, but sometimes it's too great a need to ignore. Feeling too much and too deeply is both a blessing and a curse....but far more the former than the latter in my opinion.