Why Tennessee?

People keep asking me "Why Tennessee?" - often with a very incredulous tone.  I'm going to document it here and now.  

It seems like we were destined to come here at some point in our lives.  About 15 years ago, Howard was accepted to medical school at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.  We decided to stay in San Diego so that he could attend UCSD Medical School while I kept my teaching job in National City.  

Three years ago he had the chance to come here again to do research at Vanderbilt.  At the same time, he also had the chance to work at Google in Mountain View, California.  We knew that if he didn't work at Google, he'd regret it.  So he worked there for three years.  During that time, he started to miss academia.  He sent out the word that he wanted to return to academia and, in a horrible economy, felt fortunate to have a couple of great job offers.  We decided it was finally time to come to Tennessee.

Here's the cool part of the story that can't be neglected.  During medical school, Howard was randomly assigned to an adviser named Dan Masys.  Dan told him about a field called medical informatics.  He suggested that Howard do a two-month rotation at NIH in Bethesda, Maryland to see if he liked the field.  He loved it!  While Howard was doing his PhD in Boston, Dan relocated to Nashville to take a position as Professor and Department Chair of Biomedical Informatics at Vanderbilt University.  The amazing thing about Dan is that, even though, he wanted Howard to come to Vanderbilt three years ago, he encouraged him to take the job at Google.  What an amazing guy!  He's had such an influence in Howard's career path and I still have yet to meet him!

The real credit for all of this really goes to the Lord though.  On paper, it all looks like a well-orchestrated career path - only we didn't orchestrate it.  All we did was follow the guidance that we got through our faith and prayers.  It was a long tough haul that included many cross-country moves, but I think we finally got to where we were supposed to be - in Tennessee!  Yee haw!