After graduation, I finally landed a job with WDD (Website Design & Development, then later We Do Digital). Based in a town called Wadsworth, it was finally time to leave my home state of NY and make my way in the ol’ Plymouth Horizon towards Northeast Ohio. With Cedar Point and other Cedar Fair parks being main clients, the projects were always fun and diverse. And with a team size never higher than a dozen, one always wore plenty of hats to get the work done.
Thinking about grad school, I pursued two options. First, a career doing visual effects for film, but the student aid wasn’t there. Instead, a grad assistantship at RIT helped cover the expense of getting my MBA. As it turns out, learning core business principles as well as focusing on marketing skills would be invaluable.
Everyone alive then recalls where they were on 9/11. I was in a college campus basement proofing that week’s magazine issue when news slowly spread — but few websites were loading. Then calls came in, word got around, and while walking to class a tower fell; the other while I was in a lab. Leading REPORTER over the next few weeks and making sure we were a voice for the students was a challenge that changed me forever.
A had seen commercials for years. Ordered and pored over the Family Getaway Guides. But the addition of the 300′-tall Millennium Force roller coaster sealed the deal — this would be the year I finally set foot at Cedar Point!
Helping start my high school newspaper naturally led me to RIT’s student-run weekly magazine, the REPORTER. What began as a writing position turned into an editor role, then managing editor, and finally Editor-in-Chief. I loved having the opportunity to transform the publication, both making it full color and ushering it into the online world. In return I gained real-world journalism and design skills, plus the experience of how to lead a team.
Towards the end of my freshman year, I joined a college outdoor club on a tandem skydiving excursion. It was something I always wanted to do, and shocked pretty much anyone who knew me! But it lit a fire, and with over 1,000 jumps since my life has certainly been full of adventure and amazing friends I’ve met across the sky.
I applied to and got in to the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT — go Tigers!) knowing it was a very reputable college; being far away enough from home but close enough to bring back laundry was icing on the cake. But what started as a beginning in computer science quickly shifted to a much broader and enjoyable Information Technology program. Turns out I just wasn’t cut out to only write code 8 hours every day…
Years of extra credit projects, AP classes, honor society meetings and SAT exams finally culminated in graduation from high school. I think I may even have my salutatorian speech somewhere.
It happened so fast. One day she was fine, then on October 31 while out shopping my grandmother had a stroke and fell in a parking lot. Three days later she was gone. While my grandfather would pass a few years later after a long bout with depression, this was a shock — especially for someone who had a very small family to begin with (“Dad” was long gone). I always kinda hated Halloween after this.
10 years of a Catholic elementary school education would come to an end, but the next four years as a Cheektowaga Central HS Warrior expanded my horizons. The scenery and classroom sizes changed considerably, but my nerdy bookworm personality would not.
