AMA #34 MAS SCOTT

The details of my life are quite inconsequential... My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery....

uh, my bad. Got my story confused with Dr. Evil again. My dad was actually a police officer in Fairfax, VA which is where I grew up. I knew i wanted to be an architect pretty early on (or, really, that I wanted to draw pictures instead of getting a regular degree with right answers that you had to remember for final exams). As the son of a cop, I also knew that I wasn't going out of state for College. So, I only applied to VT (I was real dumb at 16/17) and thankfully got accepted in the architecture program in 98. This was just in time to have the 99 team inject college football directly into my veins.

My brother is 1 year older and was a Sophomore at Tech when I started in 98. We weren't close in high school (he was a super talented athlete and I was a soon-to-be-collegiate jackass (more on that soon) but we became super tight at Tech. The next year, our cousin transferred to VT from NCSU which meant that 60% of the people in our generation are Hokies.

Like all good stories of jackassery, mine begins with a dare. One day in the spring of our junior year, my roommate, a Hokie cheerleader, announced to our apartment that mascot tryouts were starting that night and claimed, in so many words, that I wasn't man enough to go. I had to prove him wrong so, three weeks, a bunch of dancing, a ton of sweat, and one massive bellyflop into an empty kiddie pool on the floor of Cassell later, I became the Hokiebird (along with 3 of the funniest people you will ever meet). We got to experience the '01 and '02 seasons through the sweat soaked, mesh covered eyes of the Bird.

The birds are technically 'athletes' and as such we had the privilege of working out in Jamerson with the real Olympic sports athletes. I got to meet so many cool people there that I wouldnt have otherwise met squirreled away in the depths of the architecture buildings. Most importantly, I met Mrs Mas Scott who was a trainer with football team and a strength and conditioning coach there.

Fast forward 20 years, she and I and our English Lab named Lane (you already know how she got her name) live in Bethany Beach, Delaware. I started and we run an architecture firm with offices here and in Philly that focuses on sustainable design. I also co-started an uninformed, irregularly recorded, and horribly produced podcast with two other Hokies called Bird Brains. you may (emphasis on may) hear us this fall ... if we get around to it.

Wanna know more? well, ya know, AMA