Kivus

Resume: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfkp9k5d_109hsnp5p

Biography

I was born in Maine on the last day of September in 1980. Maine was, and remains today, a beautiful state to live in, though it took me leaving the state to realize it. From the rocky coasts of Kennebunkport, to the mountains on Mount Desert Island, there was a lot of gorgeous areas that I never really appreciated. Still, those first years of my life provided me with a number of chances to develop academically and athletically (maybe not so much socially) and I look back at them fondly, for the most part.

As my days of high school at St. Dom’s started winding down, I came to the realization that I had accomplished everything I felt I could in Auburn, Maine. In fact, I thought that I had accomplished pretty much everything I could in Maine as a whole. I decided that when it came time to head off to college, I would take the opportunity to drastically change my scenery. Though a lot of my friends were looking at schools scattered throughout New England, I focused my search on the South. In fact, I took a week with my father to come down, stay in Charlotte, and get up close and personal looks at the schools in North Carolina and South Carolina. Though I did find Wake Forest to be an absolutely beautiful campus, when the paperwork was all done and all the financial aid was offered, I ended up following the tires paws along the road to Clemson.

When I left Maine, and the comforts of my 18-year home, to go to Clemson University in the Fall of 1999, I had a feeling that I might not be moving back to New England anytime soon. The difference in the climate, the the difference in the culture, pretty much everything about Clemson intrigued me. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of ACC football in the fall and the thrill of seeing some of the best basketball teams in the country come into LittleJohn to play the Tigers. On the academic front, I was fortunate enough to have some excellent professors (Dr. Christine Boese and Dr. Joe Turner among the most influential) and was able to participate in a Pilot of the College of Science & Engineering’s Laptop Program, something that provided a tremendous amount of influence in the career paths I’ve ended up taking.

As my time at Clemson was drawing to a close, I started thinking about where I wanted to relocate for my first job in the dreaded “real world”. I thought back to the time I spent in Charlotte, right before my senior year in high school, and set my sights on finding a place there. Looking back now, I got kind of lucky, as I managed to snag a job without an extensive slate of interviews. Though I knew practically no one in the area, a week before graduation, I packed up my car and took my first trip to my new apartment in Charlotte, ready to begin my career at DST.

The low point of my time at DST occurred near the middle of my second year. I was tossed about among managers, I ran afoul of my department’s director, and that, combined with some professional immaturity on my part, left me searching for a direction in what I wanted to do with my career. After a period of evaluation, however, I decided to explore the Charlotte job market. Unfortunately for me, the Charlotte job market was saturated with jobs from the 2 major banks, positions that I was not terribly interested in. I was at a career crossroads and was looking for something to bump me in a new direction.

Around the time I was struggling with my own career, my little sister was going through a transition of her own. She had decided late in her college career that she was going to pursue a dental degree, however, was missing a number of key requirements to apply to most dental schools. After planning some things out, my sister moved in with me in May of 2003, and started her long, hard road to getting into dental school.

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