i double majored in english and that's where i got to know the delightful mary claytor. i went to new york for a few years and people in my industry are encouraged to do and when i got there, there was a sense i had begun to develop as a student, but that really came to a point in the more rarefied spaces i encountered in new york city including columbia university where i went to graduate school, a powerful-- palpable sense of where i came from somehow in those places and maybe even in the american story that we tell ourselves, thinking like i'm looking around and there is no one from where i'm from. there is no one who, you know was in gaul-- involved in agriculture let alone rural life and so that was a formative experience in i think that in that moments-- maybe someone can help me i can't remember whose quote this is, but it's like they didn't become a kansas and until i went to new york. [laughter] i remember like-- i was like the kid in school that as i said i was very ambitious, straight a kid, very bookish. i had goals and i was kind of on the warpath of the cob

was an undergraduate at the university of kansas i was a straight a student meeting people like mary claytor. i was excelling as a kid on a college campus. i literally did not know what the term graduate school meant. so much for kids who come from places like i do just like the language of talking about the things that are taken for granted. i was living at the biggest dream i head for myself. my senior year of college. i will confess that i have no intention of going to graduate school once they explained to me what it was. but, it came with the summer research stipend to spend a summer where i wouldn't have to break my back. instead i could use that statement to research this book. i also have the undergraduate research road -- research award. that was a federal program. it played such a pivotal role in my life. some people would love to look at my story and say you, work hard all good. i'm here someone who really represents the exception to the rule. my job now is to shine a light on the fact for all this people that don't have the privilege of being at this podium. [applause]. the book