Hector Medina:  

After graduation I went to St. John's for a year but working full-time, commuting to and from school by bus and subway and it was a disastrous experience...and then transferred to a small college in Iowa...yeah, hard to believe. Got great grades there and came to realize that college was going to work afterall and was very thankful to have found myself again academically. The next few years were filled with school and working when I would return to NY to save enough money to return to college...a pretty rough go of it financially, but I kept after that degree and finally got it 9 years after h.s. graduation. After college graduation went to Boston to work my first "real" job as a high school teacher/guidance counselor and lived there for a couple of years before returning to the Midwest for graduate school a few more years. After that, I went to live in Austin, TX to assume my first real "professional" job at the University of Texas at Austin. Texas was not a place I enjoyed or liked...too hot, too crazy and left there after a couple of years to take a job at Cornell University in upstate New York, where I lived for about 11 years out in the country with my dogs and shared a horse I stabled nearby with another person...yeah, hard to believe...again. From there I moved to Madison, WI to take a position in upper administration at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where I stayed for quite a few years, until I left for a job in the United Arab Emirates (Abu Dhabi & Dubai) to work for the UAE President's Office overseeing their international students in the US, UK and Canada, but returned to the US after a while to care for my elderly parents that still lived on Long Island at the time, while I still lived in Madison, WI...not easy, but had to be done. Today, I still live in Madison, WI with my partner of 19 years. We both are employed in our respective professions (academics & I.T.). I also have been...Expand for more