A record of formal study, failed starts, continuing education, and the return to mathematics.
“Knowledge doesn’t simply accumulate. It reshapes the person acquiring it.”
— Matthew McClendon
My education has never followed a straight line. It has been shaped as much by failure, curiosity, and experience as by classrooms and degrees.
Each chapter answered a different question. Oklahoma State taught me I wasn't ready. Stanford rekindled my love of learning. MIT closed an important gap. I had the intuition and experience, but not the formal vocabulary to communicate it. Self-education became a genuine passion for learning, leading to forty courses and twenty-plus executive certificates.
Learning, treated as an archive rather than a credential list.
The burden of expectation. I arrived assuming success was inevitable, then discovered that intelligence and readiness are not the same. Physics became civil engineering, then undecided, before uncertainty took over.
For years, Stanford represented the world I wanted to be part of. What started as prestige chasing became a genuine love of learning. Improv changed how I communicate; ICME sparked my passion for data science.
MIT closed an important gap. I had the intuition and experience, but not the formal vocabulary to communicate it. Self-education became a genuine passion for learning, leading to forty courses and twenty-plus executive certificates.
People often asked what I would study if I could start over at eighteen. My answer was always statistics and probability. Eventually I realized I didn't have to be eighteen to begin. A B.S. in Mathematics with a concentration in Statistics is the result.