My time post-Peabody has been quite the adventure. I graduated in 2001 and moved on to Charlottesville High School, where I quickly got involved in theater, speech, debate, newspaper and quiz bowl, plus occasionally finding a spare minute or two to do my homework. In ’05 I moved up north to Boston, where I enrolled at Tufts University and spent the next four years getting a BA in English. I also delved deeper during my college years into a passion of mine: sportswriting.

I covered a variety of Division III college sports at Tufts, most notably basketball and football. I parlayed that experience into a couple of part-time paying gigs covering college sports on the national level, and then after graduation, I landed a full-time job as a beat reporter covering the Boston Celtics. In just two seasons, I got to see quite a few moments in NBA history firsthand: a Celtics-Lakers NBA Finals in 2010, LeBron James’ last game before “The Decision” and his first game after, and even the final games of Shaquille O’Neal’s career.

Outside of my career, I’ve developed an all-consuming but fun hobby — I play competitive Scrabble. I played my first tournament in 2007 and got really into it after college, traveling around the country to play as often as possible. I’ve now played about 70 tournaments in 14 states. A couple highlights include winning $2,300 in a high-stakes tournament in 2011, and placing in the top 10 (OK, fine, 10th exactly) at the national championship in Dallas in 2010.

Scrabble’s a time-consuming pursuit. It takes a lot of practice to sharpen your game and a lot of time to get your vocabulary up to snuff (we have about 100,000 words in our dictionary, give or take). But to me, it’s worth it.