OKC 🛫 DC

I’ve called Oklahoma City home for the last 8 years. I started here at Oklahoma Christian University (OC) in 2013, and I’ve grown an awful lot as a person while here. It some ways it’s hard to beleive it’s already been 8 years, it feels just like yesterday that I was a bright-eyed freshman, ready to take on the world.

8 years later, I’ve graduated with an undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering, a Master degree in Cybersecurity, and am now moving onto my next full-time gig with Apple in DC. I’m beyond excited to move to one of my all time favorite places, working for a company that I have admired for such a long time.

During the summer of my junior year of college at OC, I had the opportunity to intern in DC, focusing on the ways that engineering and technology can inform public policy. I grew in so many ways when I was in DC that summer. I came out to my friends and some of my family, and I truly felt like I was in a place that fit for me. Which made it all the more difficult to leave just a short 14 weeks later. DC felt magical to me in a way that is still hard for me to articulate. To paraphrase author and conversion therapy survivor Julie Rodgers, DC feels like “gay Disney Land,” I couldn’t agree more.

When I got that internship I joked with one of my good friends, Aubrey, that I should make a blog called “Dispatches from the District” where I chronicle my life living in the District for the summer. I never actually did end up writing anything that summer. So this is sort of a second chance at that. Writing is both good practice and I find it more fulfilling than the predominant social-media style communication that we’re all used to.

I’m hoping to post here semi-regularly, at the very least I want to chronicle parts of DC in photos here, even if those posts are light on actualy writing.

Preston