Part of my reason for taking on a second major in Russian is that I spent the first semester of my junior year studying in Krasnodar, Russia, which was part of the Soviet Union at the time. After returning, I was only 8 credits short of a Russian major, so it was an easy decision to make. I was there for three months, which made it the longest time I spent outside the U.S. as well as the farthest from home I had ever traveled. Such travel is essential --- it gives one perspective. I now understand why people are always telling me that they want me out of the country as soon as possible.

Shortly after returning, I had to face the unavoidable prospect of graduation, which to me meant getting a real job, taking on new responsibilities, and generally having to behave like an adult. At the last minute, I found a temporary reprieve from this catastrophe by deciding to enroll in graduate study in mathematics, thus prolonging my adolescence for another seven years.

As an English/Russian double-major, I was ill-prepared to pursue a doctorate in mathematics, and this fact hindered my efforts to get admitted to any graduate program, anywhere. Making my first attempts at re-matriculation in May from the relative comfort of my parents' home in San Antonio, I was informed that I was already four months late to enroll even as an adult special at The University of Texas, and the folks at The University of Texas at San Antonio were happy to admit me, but they would require me to earn a second bachelor's degree --- in mathematics --- before I could start working on a graduate degree.

I finally started a job in Austin a few days a week as a stop-gap measure until I found something better to do with my life. It was during one of these trips that I stopped off at Southwest Texas State University to see whether I could take classes part-time there. Sometimes you get what you want when you aren't even looking for it: I was ultimately given an Assistant Instructor position and allowed to take all of the math classes I wanted, graduate and undergraduate.

Anyway, I owe a huge debt to Stan Wayment and Ernest Ratliff at Southwest Texas State for giving me the opportunity to get caught up on my math skills. At the end of the year I found myself again begging for any opportunity to get into a graduate program, only this time at the doctoral level and in the north. As before, most places turned up their noses at me, but The University of Minnesota both admitted me and hired me as a Teaching Assistant for $10,400 a year --- a substantial increase over my salary at SWT.

I struggled for the first two years to overcome the deficiencies in my math background, but I decided early in my third year to specialize in combinatorics and chose to work with Vic Reiner as my adviser. I struggled for a few more years, and finally presented a successful defense of my thesis on April 10, 1997 --- my father's 58th birthday.