I am a sociologist who studies segregation and the relationships between education and inequality. How did I get here? Here are a few important points along the way.
- Spent childhood summers in West Texas hoeing/spraying cotton, learning the value of an education and developing preferences for non-manual labor.
- Liked science, but realized senior year of college I did not want to spend my life in a chemistry lab studying a protein strand.
- Joined the Mississippi Teacher Corps, taught high school chemistry and coached basketball in Mississippi for three years.
- Got troubled by and interested in educational inequality and segregation, decided to study sociology, and went to grad school at Wisconsin.
- Spent six years wandering in the Sonoran desert.
- Made my inevitable return to Texas à la Willie Nelson.
When I’m not being a sociologist, I reenact classic movie scenes 
with my cats (Max thinks I’ve been pushing too many pencils) or have them fill me in on the latest celebrity gossip.
The aforementioned wandering in the desert, documented by my wife.
In the pandemic, I took up woodworking with hand tools. Here is one of my early projects: a dovetail box.
Jeremy E. Fiel 