I haven’t really announced that I went back to work at Moorpark College. Part of that is because I’m only there part-time, and part of it is because I honestly didn’t know how I would feel about being back. Moorpark had been a pretty significant part of my life for a long time, and after eight years away, returning to my old stomping grounds felt like it might be a little strange.
The truth is that this job sits within a much longer story that I’ve talked about with a lot of people over the years, but have never actually sat down and written. Moorpark College didn’t just happen to be where I went to school or where I eventually spent a significant part of my career. It played an almost absurdly large role in determining what that career became in the first place. Given that I’m back now, it seemed like a good time to finally tell the whole story.
When I decided to attend Moorpark College’s fall 2026 convocation a couple of weeks ago, I wasn’t entirely sure why I was going. Adjunct instructors aren’t required to attend, and I had only recently been rehired to teach in the Game Design program. There was no particular professional obligation for me to show up. I mostly just wanted to reconnect. It would be nice to see some familiar faces and say hello. Though part of me also felt a bit of dread. After all, Moorpark had never really been just a place where I worked. It was a community I had been part of for years, and I had no idea how it would feel to step back into it after so much time away.
I had left in 2018 and, aside from staying connected with a few people online, I had essentially disappeared from the campus. That morning, I was extremely anxious. I found myself thinking about the potentially awkward conversations I might have, wondering whether people would remember me, whether I would have to explain what happened, and whether anyone would actually care that I was back.
Then I walked into the event, and before long, I began to recognize familiar faces. We would notice each other, smile, and make our way toward one another. There were hugs, stories about what had happened over the past eight years, and more than a few people telling me how good it was to see me and how much they had missed me. A few even told me they had been thinking about me recently.
I had made up a negative story in my head, and instead found myself almost in tears over how genuinely warm the welcome was. I had expected returning to feel uncomfortable, but instead I was confronted with something I hadn’t anticipated. I had apparently mattered there more than I realized. Moorpark had changed, I had changed, and a lot had happened in the eight years since I left, but the connections I had made there had survived the distance.
That was difficult to reconcile with the circumstances of my return. I wasn’t going back as the person who had left in 2018. I wasn’t returning to run the program I had built, and I wasn’t even returning as a full-time faculty member. I was coming back as an adjunct.
And, somewhat hilariously, I had to interview for the job. I could appreciate the irony, although I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a little humiliating. The classes I was interviewing to teach were classes I had written, in a program I had built, for a degree I had spent years developing. I had also been tenured at Moorpark before I left. Yet there I was, going through the community college hiring process just like anyone else.
That sequence of events would have seemed ridiculous to me a few years earlier. In 2026, it seemed almost perfectly appropriate, because my relationship with Moorpark College had always been somewhat circular.
I began attending Moorpark in 1990 and received my AA in 1993 (the typical community college three-year plan). At the time, I had no idea that the college would eventually become the pivotal point of both my career and much of my adult life. At that time wasn’t even thinking about my career, let alone what it might be.
I was 19 years old and walking down Raider Walk, the long sidewalk that runs from one end of the campus to the other. As I approached the cafeteria, I could see something through the glass sliding doors at the entrance. I couldn’t tell what it was, but even from a couple hundred yards away, I knew I was seeing something.
The closer I got, the more apparent it became.
It was pink.
When I finally got close enough to see what I was looking at, I realized it was a pink Post-it note pinned to the cork job board that used to sit in the cafeteria entrance. The note was handwritten in Sharpie, and all it said was Junior Graphic Designer, followed by a phone number.
I called it later that day.
I got an interview and was nearly hired on the spot.
That little pink Post-it note changed the direction of my life completely.
At 19, I had no way of knowing that finding that job would eventually lead to a career in the game industry, or that games would become the professional foundation on which I would later build much of my career as a designer, producer, educator, and program director. I was simply a community college student who happened to notice something on a bulletin board. Moorpark had started my college education, but it had also become the place where my professional life began.
A few years later, after leaving the game industry to attend CalArts for a BFA in Experimental Animation, I found myself back at Moorpark to finish a couple of classes on the cheap. While I was there, I met a renowned photographer, the lead photography professor at the college, who would become a good friend, mentor, and another unexpectedly important figure in my career.
During the first couple of weeks of class, this professor had all students submit their résumés as an assignment. When he saw mine, he became interested in my professional background and recommended me for an adjunct position teaching multimedia.
So while I attended CalArts, I was also teaching at Moorpark.
That was my first real experience teaching, and I discovered that I was pretty good at it. I liked it too. After graduating from CalArts, I interviewed for a full-time position at Moorpark, but I didn’t get it. (That’s another story about wearing jeans to an interview with the President of the school, but I’ll save that for another time.)
Due to the rejection and a couple of other life-changing factors, I decided to move to Kansas City, Missouri. (Which is an even longer story, and definitely a better one.)
At the time, these events didn’t seem particularly connected. They were simply the next steps in a life that was still taking shape. I worked as a web and UX designer, did motion graphics and multimedia work, and eventually became a multimedia and game designer for Sprint.
Then, in 2008, I was laid off.
I spent the next couple of years working as a contract web, UX, and game designer. The work was inconsistent, and I was trying to figure out what came next when, in 2010, I received a phone call from my old photography professor and friend.
Moorpark was looking for someone to work in the multimedia department and, more significantly, to build a new AA degree in Game Design.
I applied, interviewed, and got the job.
I taught one online Game Design course during the spring 2010 semester, and then my wife, our four-year-old son, our dog, and I moved back to California to begin a new chapter.
The move wasn’t entirely triumphant. We had a beautiful 101-year-old shirtwaist house in Kansas City that we loved, but we couldn’t sell it, and eventually we were forced to let it go through foreclosure. We were leaving behind a home, a life, and many wonderful friends that we had expected to keep, while simultaneously moving toward something that we hoped would be more stable.
What I had at Moorpark was an opportunity to build something from scratch.
I spent the next several years developing the Game Design curriculum, building courses, working through accreditation, figuring out what a community college Game Design program should actually look like, and trying to convince people that the degree was worth building in the first place. In 2015, the AA in Game Design was accredited and launched.
Before I left Moorpark in 2018, I had been tenured and had watched two cohorts complete their capstone projects and earn their degrees. Several of those students went on to work at Nintendo, Treyarch, Insomniac, Blizzard, and other game companies, while others started their own studios.
Seeing that happen was one of the most satisfying things I had accomplished professionally. It also gave me something I hadn’t really considered when I first started building the program: the chance to create the kind of pathway that had once been created for me.
And I still left.
In 2018, Azusa Pacific University contacted me about a new position to build a four-year BA in Game Design. I loved Moorpark, and I was proud of what I had built there, but the opportunity presented a different kind of challenge. I would be taking what I had learned from building the AA and trying to build a four-year program at a private university.
(It was also nice to be poached.)
I applied, interviewed, and was hired. I began working on the BA in Game Design in fall 2018, while continuing to teach one class at Moorpark that semester. The new program was accredited and launched in fall 2019, just one semester before COVID changed higher education, the game industry, and pretty much everything else.
The first cohort was small, with about ten students, but it was strong. For a first-time offering at a private university, the results were encouraging, and there was every reason to be optimistic about what the program could become.
Then the pandemic happened.
The cohorts that began during and after COVID were not as strong, and APU itself struggled with a variety of factors that affected enrollment and the overall health of the institution. Eventually, the university made the decision to sunset Game Design along with a number of other programs. That decision was made in spring 2025.
After spending roughly fifteen years building Game Design programs, I suddenly didn’t have one to build.
I also didn’t have a job.
From fall 2025 until fall 2026, I was unemployed, with the exception of a short-term job during spring 2026. During that period, I made a serious attempt to get back into the industry. I had already been applying to industry jobs while I was still at APU, and over the course of roughly two years I submitted more than 200 applications.
With a few exceptions (including a couple of prominent universities), I couldn’t get a bite.
That was difficult to understand. My résumé wasn’t empty. I had spent nearly twenty-five years working in games, design, technology, production, education, curriculum development, and program administration. I had worked professionally in the industry, built academic programs, produced hundreds of student games, managed budgets, developed courses, and worked across a fairly broad range of creative and technical disciplines.
None of that seemed to translate into getting hired.
There is a particular psychological effect that comes from repeatedly applying for jobs you believe you are qualified to do and hearing almost nothing back. Eventually, the question stops being whether a particular position was a good fit and starts becoming whether you are still relevant to the field at all.
I began questioning things that I had previously taken for granted. Maybe I had been away from the industry too long. Maybe my experience was too broad. Maybe I had become too academic. Maybe I was too old for the kind of jobs I wanted. Maybe I was simply difficult to categorize in an industry that increasingly seemed to want people with very specific, easily searchable skill sets.
At the same time, I was reconsidering teaching.
Teaching had been a significant part of my career for a long time, but I had also become very aware of how demanding it was. The actual classroom is only a fraction of the job. There is preparation, grading, student support, email, meetings, curriculum development, administrative work, marketing and outreach, troubleshooting, and the constant mental awareness that there is always something else that needs to be done. Teaching can become a 24/7 job even when the class itself occupies only a few hours a week.
Then I had a brief taste of something completely different. The short-term job I had during spring 2026 allowed me to leave work at work. When the workday ended, I was done. There weren’t students waiting for responses, assignments waiting to be graded, lectures waiting to be prepared, or curriculum problems quietly occupying the back of my mind.
It was glorious.
For the first time in a while, I could understand why someone might decide they never wanted to teach again. I seriously considered it.
The funny thing was that I wasn’t sure I had actually stopped liking teaching. I think I had stopped liking everything that surrounded teaching. There is an important distinction between those two things, and I didn’t fully appreciate it until I had some time away.
Then the opportunity at Moorpark appeared, and I didn’t hesitate. Of course, there was a small matter of actually getting the job.
As an incoming adjunct, I had to go through the community college hiring process and interview for the position just like anyone else. The classes I was interviewing to teach were classes I had written, in a program I had built, at a college where I had previously been tenured. I understood why the process existed, of course, but there was something undeniably humorous – and, if I’m being honest, a little humiliating – about having to convince Moorpark that I was qualified to teach the curriculum I had created.
But I went through the interview, got the job, and am now teaching three classes this semester. And they are packed.
That part has been unexpectedly satisfying. I don’t need to prove anything, although it is reassuring to know that I still have something to offer. After everything that happened over the previous couple of years, it’s a joy to be back doing something that is both familiar and fulfilling, even after 16 years of doing it.
When I first built the Game Design program at Moorpark, a big part was trying to figure out what it should actually be. I had industry experience and a stellar advisory committee made up of industry connections, but I was still very new to higher education. I was figuring out curriculum, accreditation, assessment, administration, student support, and all of the other things that come with building an academic program.
Now I was walking back into essentially the same environment after building another degree, running another program, working with a completely different student population, and spending years thinking about what had worked and what hadn’t.
The program hadn’t just waited for me. I had changed enough that I could see it very differently. And this realization has made me think differently about leaving Moorpark in the first place.
I never regretted leaving. At least, I don’t think I did. But I missed it. In fact, I pined for it. Regretting and missing are not the same.
I missed the college campus while I was at APU. I missed the people, the students, the culture, and the particular satisfaction of working at a community college where the connection between what you teach and the lives of your students can be very direct. But I also knew why I had left. I wanted a new challenge, and I wanted to see if I could build something at a different scale.
For a long time, I thought of career progression as a fairly linear process. You build something, you move on to something bigger, build it, and then move on to even greater challenges. The next position should have more responsibility, a larger budget, a bigger title, or a broader scope. Leaving Moorpark for APU made sense within that model. What I hadn’t accounted for was that careers often don’t actually work that way.
When I was unemployed, I had moments when returning would have felt like admitting that leaving had been a mistake. It was easy to look at the sequence of events – tenured faculty member, university professor, program director, unemployed, adjunct – and interpret it as a decline. But that interpretation only made sense if I assumed careers were supposed to move in one direction. They aren’t.
The person who returned to Moorpark in 2026 had considerably more to offer than the person who left in 2018. I wasn’t returning to pick up where I left off. I was bringing everything that happened after I left with me.
That includes the things that worked and the things that didn’t. It includes building a bachelor’s degree and watching it disappear. It includes trying to get back into the industry and failing to do so. It includes discovering that I missed teaching more than I thought I did. It includes discovering that I also really enjoyed having a job where I could close my laptop and be done for the day.
It also includes eight years of wondering, occasionally and quietly, whether I would ever find my way back.
So when I walked into convocation, and people welcomed me the way they did, I think the emotion came from more than simply seeing old friends. I had spent the previous year trying to figure out what came next.
Then I walked into Moorpark College and discovered that, at least to some of the people there, I hadn’t disappeared at all. They remembered me. More importantly, they remembered the work. And now I’m back in the classrooms.
I’m preparing lectures, answering emails, troubleshooting student projects, grading assignments, and doing all of the things that once made me wonder whether I wanted to teach anymore. I’m also watching students discover game design in much the same way that students did when I first built the program more than fifteen years ago.
There is a certain irony in all of it.
At 19, I found a job on a Moorpark bulletin board that launched my career in games. Years later, someone at Moorpark gave me my first real opportunity to teach. Then I came back to build a Game Design degree. I left to build another one. That program ended, and after two years of trying unsuccessfully to get back into the industry, I returned to Moorpark to teach the program I had built.
None of it was planned. But looking backward, there is a pattern that I couldn’t see while I was living it.
Moorpark didn’t simply begin my college education. It became the place where I found my first career, discovered that I could teach, developed the skills to build academic programs, and eventually built the program that now allows other students to find their own way into an industry.
But when I think about what brought me back, I don’t think about buildings, classrooms, or even the programs I helped create. I think about the people. That’s the part I had forgotten while I was away. Moorpark was never just a school to me. It was a community.
The pink Post-it note was still just a pink Post-it note. It was a completely ordinary thing that happened to catch my attention as I walked across campus when I was 19.
I couldn’t have known what it would lead to.
That’s probably the most useful thing I’ve learned from looking back at all of this. The important parts of a career rarely announce themselves as important when they’re happening. A job posting on a bulletin board doesn’t look like the beginning of a 30-year career. A conversation with a professor doesn’t look like the beginning of a teaching career. A phone call in 2010 doesn’t look like the beginning of an academic program that will eventually graduate students who go on to work at some of the biggest game studios in the world.
And an invitation to teach part-time doesn’t necessarily look like a return. Sometimes it just looks like the next thing that happened. Don’t get me wrong. I wish this was a post about returning to Moorpark College full-time. But I’m still not sure what the next thing will be.
For now, though, I’m back, teaching three packed classes in the program I started building in 2010. I left because I thought it would be a way to advance my career. It took me a long time to realize that coming back could be part of advancing as well.
There are a few people I want to acknowledge because my relationship with Moorpark College was never really about the institution alone. It was always about the people who made it a community.
John Grzywacz-Gray, who has since passed away, was the photography professor and friend who first recognized the value in my skills and professional experience and recommended me for my first teaching position. That recommendation changed the direction of my career in ways neither of us could have known at the time.
Julius Sokenu has been one of my most consistent champions. He was a dean when I first came to Moorpark and is now President of the college. Throughout all of these years, he has continued to stand up for me and advocate for my expertise.
Cande Larson, the lead faculty member in Film, Television & Media Arts, has continued to support me both when I was on campus and during the years I was away.
Nathan Bowen, Professor of Music Theory and Technology, never stopped keeping me informed about what was happening at the college, even when I was no longer there.
And Erika Lizée, Professor of Art and Chair of the Art & Design Department, has always been a true confidant and one of those people who somehow makes navigating the bureaucracy of the community college system a little easier.
There are many more colleagues I cherish, of course – some are still here on campus, and others have moved on to other places – and I couldn’t possibly name everyone who has contributed to my experience at Moorpark. They are part of what makes the college what it is. Moorpark College is an incredible community of scholars, faculty, staff, and people who care about the work and about one another.