Secret Key

My relationship with formal schooling has been intimate, and unconventional. I read early and insatiably, and when I began school I was already well ahead of my grade–so much so that my teachers recommended my parents to take me out of school; my parents (god bless them) taught me at home for several years, largely by throwing good books at me as quickly as I could digest them. When I returned to school, I was reading at a college level, and I graduated with honors. I recieved a National Merit scholarship and University Club full-ride scholarship to attend Utah State University, where I graduated summa cum laude in 2003 with a BA in literary studies and philosophy–and an understanding that while I wanted to continue my studies, I also wanted to be paid to do it.

In 2004, I began working as a proofreader at Westwords, Inc., a Utah-based prepress academic publishing firm that grew into part of a multinational corporation in a series of mergers, as the editors of the world collectively put down their red pens and went online. In 2008 I started working as an independent contractor with several of the largest publishers in academia. Since that time, I’ve continued to stay on the cutting edge of the industry as a freelance copyeditor, fact checker, proofreader, consultant, and trainer of humans and AIs. After hours, I’ve pursued my own, more esoteric research in areas of study the academy barely knows how to acknowledge. In the process, I’ve received a broad and self-directed education with a focus on multidisciplinary synthesis and the history of discourse. I give honor and respect to countless writers, thinkers, teachers, researchers, scholars, scientists, scribes, editors, publishers, and geniuses mad and otherwise whose works and words have been my bread and butter, and the support of my life and family, for many years.