I was not very interested or motivated by the prospect of high school.
The lack of applied learning made me anxious and unenthused; How am I going to use this stuff in the real world? Why am I learning trivia? What does this all amount to? The result was an unengaged student who faced some challenging times with a great deal of uncertainty and tension.
While traditional schooling was unappealing to me, I was hungry for knowledge. I started playing the guitar at 13 and spent hours learning the instrument through online forums. It was an indication of things to come for me — independent study using online resources and computer technology.
Fortunately, I decided to attend community college after high school, which is where I invigorated my passion for institutional learning. After a few years at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, Pennslyvania, I was accepted to Temple University in Philadelphia.
I originally planned to study classical guitar but realized I didn't want to turn my passion for music into a profession. Eventually, I discovered a major called 'American Studies', which is an interdiscplinary area of study that explores American culture through various types of media delivery mechanisms.
When I say I 'discovered' the major, what I mean is that I took a course with a wonderful educator named Lisa Rhodes who taught several classes that I found interesting. She brought to my attention that American Studies was a thing I could pursue and guided me through the remainder of my time at Temple. It was through this lense of study that I learned best practices for research and documentation, which ultimately laid the foundation for the first decade of my career.
During my final semester at Temple University, I applied for an unpaid position at a website that published content about Philadelphia sports.
I come from a family that fervently supports Philadelphia professional sports teams. The Philadelphia Flyers, the city's professional hockey team, had just come off a run to the league's championship. I was fortunate that my dad had purchased tickets for that post-season and had decided to but a season ticket plan for the following year. So, when the chance to write about a sports team presented itself, I knew which one I was going to pick.
The opportunity was one that established early indications of what captured my interest. The scope of my work focused on 'analytical' pieces that attempted to contextualize the outcome of games. Additionally, I would use social media platforms like Facebook and Reddit in order to try to increase the discovery of my content by reaching out to communities focused on hockey or the Flyers.
Engaging in community also presented networking opportunities, which turned my hobby into a career.
I eventually began writing at a Flyers specific site, which had press credentials to games hosted in Philadelphia. This allowed for me to attend games in an official capacity as a media memeber. It was an amazing experience for someone who grew up dreaming about how professional sports teams operated.
During this time, I really focused on locking in my work ethic. I still was not being paid, so the opportunity was to use the access to accumulate experience that would help me get to the next phase of my career. I went to every home game and wrote three stories for every game. I worked closely with my dear friend, Mark Trible, and tirelessly worked on crafting pitches with strong copy.
We eventually took on roles that resembled an editor-in-chief (Trible) and managing editor (me) type of set-up where we managed a newsdesk with a staff of about five writers. It was a rewarding time that he and I both look back on fondly.
I was fortunate enough to have been seated next to Travis Hughes while attending a Flyers home game.
Travis was the founder and editor of Broad Street Hockey, a widely-read digital media outlet owned by SB Nation, which was a network of more than 300 community sites dedicated to individual sports teams. By the time I had met Travis, SB Nation's parent company — Sports Blog Inc. — had been rebranded to Vox Media.
The company was in an expansion phase and was looking to establish a national presence through the development of a regional news desk program. Travis encouraged me to apply, which resulted in my first media job — a part-time newsdesk contributor who wrote SEO posts and news hits. Over time, I gained more hours and more responsibilities, which included copy editing and news desk management.
It was through this opportunity that I started to develop experience in the operational aspects of the site. When I first joined, my focus was on creating text-based content but I started to think about how audiences discovered our content and ways for us to promote additional stories, podcasts, and videos.
My efforts to grow SB Nation's content footprint were noticed by a man named Michael Bean, who was Vox Media's Director of Video Publishing & Distirbution.
Michael was tasked with increasing Vox Media's video viewership on its owned & operated dot com websites and he needed people to help with the efforts. He had a history with SB Nation — he had worked as a blogger for the Pittsburgh Steelers community and was a Producer with SB Nation — and had been observing the work I was doing. He offfered me a full-time position in New York City, which I gladly accepted.
During our time together, we explored many areas of growth; At one point, we were editing social videos for Vox Media's food website, Eater. Eventually, we found our path via YouTube content distribution.
I had never published a YouTube video before, so it was a completely new experience, which in hindsight is hilarious because YouTube has been such a significant aspect of the last 10 years of my career.