As an awkward teen, I naturally dealt with my social isolation by becoming an observer of human behavior and worrying myself with the sorry state of democracy (rather than with things teens should worry about, like parties). I've become a little more socially adept since, but those two interests - human behavior and democracy - became fixed fascinations.
It did, however, take a couple of decades for me to realize I could study human behavior in democracy and actually get paid to do so (presumably one day with more than a graduate student stipend). Before then, I spent over a decade working in public education, teaching high school ESL in Budapest and Guangzhou, advocating for students rights in NYC public schools and finally founding an after-school theater program for NYC public school teens.
It was the US entry in the the Iraq war and the preceding media coverage (and lack of public debate) that reawakened my age-old concerns about the robustness of our democracy. I and a few friends subsequently experimented with reinvigorating cross-partisan dialogue, but with limited success (although with lots of great cocktails along the way). But it was that experiment that turned my interest in political behavior into an obsession. It did, however, take me a couple more years (and a worthwhile detour getting a masters from HKS), before I turned fascination into vocation, first assisting the inspirational Eli Pariser in his research for The Filter Bubble, then later working as an RA for the indefatigable Todd Rogers - and finally having the great fortune to be tutored by the great minds at UM's Political Science department.
It did, however, take a couple of decades for me to realize I could study human behavior in democracy and actually get paid to do so (presumably one day with more than a graduate student stipend). Before then, I spent over a decade working in public education, teaching high school ESL in Budapest and Guangzhou, advocating for students rights in NYC public schools and finally founding an after-school theater program for NYC public school teens.
It was the US entry in the the Iraq war and the preceding media coverage (and lack of public debate) that reawakened my age-old concerns about the robustness of our democracy. I and a few friends subsequently experimented with reinvigorating cross-partisan dialogue, but with limited success (although with lots of great cocktails along the way). But it was that experiment that turned my interest in political behavior into an obsession. It did, however, take me a couple more years (and a worthwhile detour getting a masters from HKS), before I turned fascination into vocation, first assisting the inspirational Eli Pariser in his research for The Filter Bubble, then later working as an RA for the indefatigable Todd Rogers - and finally having the great fortune to be tutored by the great minds at UM's Political Science department.