The Beginnings of Joey Lee

Intro

I guess I could start by introducing myself! My full name is Joseph Whan Lee, but most of my friends call me Joey. I do have several nicknames though; in fact, my close friends started calling me just Joe. Fun fact, "Joey Lee" is easy to say, so a lot of people call me Joey Lee. Writing it down I realize that it really wasn't that fun of a fact...

Before I get into things, you can just look me up on facebook, instagram, twitter, github, or linkedIn. A note on social media -- I don't really like facebook that much, but I'm a big fan of facebook messenger. I haven't posted to instagram since freshmen year of college, and I've never tweeted before in my life. I do code and I've worked on open source projects that you can check out on github. Lastly, I'm not the biggest fan of linkedIn, but it is a useful resource for networking and connecting with people for professional purposes.

Growing up

Mom and Dad

Both my parents were born and raised in Korean (officially, the Republic of Korea). They both went on to get their master degrees and moved to the U.S. for the opportunity, to "chase the american dream" if you will. My dad was an electrical engineer and my mother a K12 teacher. When my older brother was born, my parents decided to start their business. It was definitely a risk, but they worked really hard and it eventually worked out. It started out as a gift shop sell knick knacks and eventually moved into selling clothing, pagers, cell phones, jewelry, and shoes. Here's some quick highlights of my parent's business. They owned a total of five stores, saved up to buy the building they were leasing, and sold the building to a casino buying up real estate in the area. They went on to buy both commercial and residential building and used a lot of the money towards efforts in our church to build a school in Mexico.

Siblings

I have two older brothers, John a year older than me and Sewhan my half brother who's ~24 years older than me. Sewhan is a pharmacist and used to live up in Buffalo. I would often visit him when I was little and we would see Niagara Falls. He's a pharmacist and now lives closer to home in western MA. He's happily married and I'm happy to have such a great sis-in-law. John is a year older than me, so we grew up together. I remember him always being smarter than me in grade school. (I don't think I became smart till around the 10th grade.) He would always get really into whatever it was that he was doing. I remember that he used to be really into magic, break dancing, and film making to name a few. He ended up going to Carnegie Mellon University as a civil engineer, switched majors a couple of times, graduated with a mechanical engineering degree and is now a software engineer.

K-12 Memories

As a child I kept to myself for the most part. My parents worked hard at the store so I could have a better life. They work 6 days a week didn't come back from the store till ~7 pm. Consequently, I grew up with a nanny when I was younger and watched a ton of TV. I was pretty shy and quiet as a kid and took on sports and lifting early on. I probably went through puberty in like 7th grade and that's probably when I started talking to people and making friends. In high school I played sports all three seasons.

Freshmen Year

Freshmen year of high school, I played football,

Sophomore Year

Junior Year

Senior Year

Athletics

I started working out in late 7th grade, and in high school I would go to the gym about 4 days a week. I grade school played various sports including:

• football from 4th - 12th grade (skipping a couple years in between) as a linebacker and running back
• wrestling from 7th - 10th grade
• lacrosse from 7th - 9th grade as a LSM
• ultimate from 11th -12th grade as a cutter
• outdoor track 10th grade doing various events

In college, I ended up lifting less probably due to the academic rigor and culture of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. I did end up playing intramural sports throughout college, and now I might get into climbing or some recreational sport like volleyball soon.

End

Well, I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. I'm not sure what I'm going to write next, but stay tuned. Thanks for reading!