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Introducing the bloggers: Ryan

Who am I, and why should you read my blog?

Hello! My name is Ryan. One scant month ago, I was lounging at my parents house, eating gummy worms and generally being a layabout. Whenever my mother would scold me or ask me to take the dog out for a walk, I balked. “Mom, I’m only around for a few more days,” I’d whine, and of course I got away without taking Sadie, our rambunctious beagle, out for a walk. She would just say, “You’re gonna miss us.” Is it weird that I don’t?

Maybe it’s the increasing lack of privacy that comes with being part of a globalized world with video chat and instant messaging, but it doesn’t really feel like I’m five thousand miles from home. I see my parents more often now than I did when I lived in Eugene, only two hours away from my parent’s house in Mill City, Oregon. For the first four years I lived in Eugene, I was in school at the University of Oregon where I earned a bachelor’s degree in English Literature, a minor in Religious Studies, a Film Studies Certificate, and also participated in a year long intensive study of Creative Writing. For the next two years, I worked at Royal Caribbean in one of their call centers, where I worked in the operations department.

Somewhere in those last two years, I decided that I wanted to go back to school for postgraduate study. I looked all around the US at schools that combined my twin loves of technology and writing, but I couldn’t find anything that really got me excited. On a lark, I widened my search to include the UK, and sure enough, I found the Electronic Publishing course here at City. Needless to say, I applied and was thrilled to be accepted into the program.

So now I’m a small town guy in the big city, and I’m surprisingly not getting lost near as much as I expected. I’m hoping that through this blog I’ll be able to convey my perspective on London, City University, the Electronic Publishing program, and also a little bit about myself. I am a fan of Nintendo, DC Comics, Flannery O’Connor short stories, Jim Carrey movies, chicken fajita pizza and the smell of autumn rain. Feel free to ask me questions in the comments section or let me know what you’d like me to talk about.

Hopefully, by now I’ve answered the first question at the top of this post. If you haven’t found an answer to the second one yet, hopefully you’ll keep reading anyway and figure out why you should read my blog as we go through the year.

Ciao for now,

Ryan