“I am from near Charleston, Missouri. I grew up on a horse farm; my family bought and sold quarter horses and farmed the land. I moved away for ten years to Columbia, Missouri, and then moved back to teach. I take art classes. That’s one thing I’m interested in, and in fact, recently I’ve thought, ‘What if I really did switch? What if I went on to get an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in visual arts?’ I’m five classes from getting my degree done. I just framed and hung a bunch of my paintings from a class this summer. You start to feel kinda proud; the faculty’s like, ‘Now you’re starting to turn into a painter!’ I don’t know that I’d leave a full, paying job to go back to school, but it’s now started to be on my mind; it sounds like something interesting to do.

“Then I think how I could maybe work here with some online classes but go to Washington University and take classes through the week and then come back. I’m starting to think, ‘How could that work?’ It seems like there are so many different ways that I can connect, and you just never know.”