Name: Tom Reitz
Age: 23
Website: www.tom-reitz.com
Occupation: web developer

Let’s see, a bit about me.

I was born in Rochester, Michigan, not too far from Detroit, where my dad worked for GM. When I was two, my dad got an offer for a faculty position at the University of Wisconsin - Madison’s Mechanical Engineering department, so we moved. Now I’ve been living in Madison for 20 years and I love it. The city always has something going on, but there’s much less crime, smog, and and bustle than in bigger cities.

I started out in a Catholic school near home, but we ran into some problems at the school. So when I was in 3rd grade, my parents decided to homeschool my brother and me.

In some ways, homeschooling was tough. You had to put in much more effort to find friends. It was more tempting to procrastinate, and, even if they’re nice, it’s not always easy to be with your parents 24×7. (I’m sure they felt the same way at times.)

But the pros far outweighed the cons, at least for me. Primarily I loved the freedom. You spent less time waiting in lines, and more time learning things you were interested in. Also I think I learned to be quite an independent learner, which is incredibly useful in college and later life.

When I got to high school, my parents were worried about homeschooling me, they thought it could hurt my chances of getting into a good college. But after looking around at the very few other options (basically public schools), we all agreed to give homeschooling a try.

During high school, I took some courses outside home (mostly to document my performance with teachers other than my parents). These included a few classes from UW-Extension, and one trigonometry class at UW (as a special student). I think this is where I first started developing an interest in math, it was the first time I really had to work a lot at it (it was after all a college course).

All of this prepared me well for college. I finished high school a semester early, and went to UW starting spring 2005. I knew right away that I wanted to study computer science. I started in that program, did very well, and eventually added the math major.

Fast-forward 4.5 years: I graduated in May 2009 with a double major in computer sciences and mathematics. Now I’m running my web development business, Reitz Internet Technologies, full-time.