Why is a fiftysomething retired naval officer at George Mason working on what is essentially his third masters degree? I'm here because I still haven't decided what I want to do when I grow up. I only found this out myself in April of 1998 when I attended a workshop on coping with a gifted and talented child (that being the youngest of my three daughters). One of the characteristics of the gifted and talented is that they seem unfocused on the topic of life goals. They see so many options available to them that when asked What do you want to do when you grow up? they can't pick just one answer or if they do they change their minds many times in the years to come. In a moment my own life was explained, since I too was once gifted and talented .
Before I became history grad student at George Mason University in 2002, I spent 21 years on active duty with the U.S. Navy followed by eleven years as a government contractor. A career as a naval officer is perfect of the gifted and talented but unfocused. It is the official, but unpublished, policy of the Bureau of Naval Personnel to always assign officers to jobs for which they have no prior training or experience. During my twenty-one years of active service I worked in jobs requiring competent knowledge in electronics, computer engineering, marine engineering, administrative law, statistics and polling, management science, and academic research. This is all in addition to my area of specialization, the safe and efficient operation of a ship at sea. In my spare time I earned a MA in National Security Studies from Georgetown University and a diploma with honors from the Naval War College. (This last could have been grandfathered into an MA in Defense and National Security Studies but who needs two masters degrees in the same subject?) My final job in the Navy was as on the staff of the Center for Naval Studies at the Naval War College. While there in 1989 we developed a projection of the likely national security environment in the 2000. Looking back it was a very accurate assessment. Looking back it is also depressing having predicted the future but then being able to do nothing prevent the bad things from happening.
My academic interests are: the settling of the far West specifically, the American colony in the Oregon Territory; the negotiation history of the United States Canada border; 20th Century arms limitation treaties; and the military as viewed by popular culture. Nonacademic interests include reading (reading things that attract my attention outside of my main interests. I enjoy wandering through library stacks and picking books at random off the shelves); computer graphics; photography; and cinema of the 1930s. I am originally from Oregon, I have three cats; Fluffy, J Cat, and Roxanne and three daughters who my wife and I sometimes confuse with the cats.