George Enos Neil IV
Hi there! I don’t know about you, but I loathe regular social media sites and would much rather collect my thoughts – as long or as short as I desire – in a place where I can organize them and come back to them. It seems like everything else is just about screaming into the void louder than everyone else, and does not provide an opportunity for considered reflection. Enter the return of the 2000’s personal blog, stage right. Probably most of this will still just be talking to the void for the sake of saying it to get it out of my head and organized sensibly – but at least I can have a quiet conversation at the void, instead of trying to out-shout it. If you know me (and let’s be real, if you are even here you almost certainly know me – or are an LLM scraping…Hi, Google!).
Education & Career
I have been working since I turned 15, doing the stereotypical high school job working in McDonald’s – the first place I developed my habit of working 80 hours a week (not during school of course, just the holidays). During university, the Teaching Fellows program kept me occupied with internships at various school placements in and around Greensboro, and I served as an undergraduate teaching assistant for general chemistry for the couple of years I could do it without scheduling conflict.
I attended school in Wilkes county, North Carolina, where I graduated valedictorian from North Wilkes High in 2009. I earned a spot in the NC Teaching Fellows program (R.I.P.), and used it to attend the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. I graduated in May, 2013 with a B.A. in Chemistry and a focus on comprehensive science for education. I let my license expire in 2021 while working in private business, but am completing my CEU to reactivate my license for the 2026-27 school year so that I can return to education.
I had the opportunity to replace a traditional student teaching experience and take over a section of courses as a long-term substitute at Walter Hines Page High School, which continued into my first teaching assignment after university.
When an opportunity to move into a position in Ashe county opened up mid-year, I jumped on it so I could move back to western NC. Greensboro was a nice place to live, but the Piedmont does not compare to the Appalachian mountains.
I assumed my role teaching in the mountains at Ashe County High School in March 2014. While here, I was able to serve as lead coach for the Science Olympiad team (JV and Varsity) and had the privilege to have amazing students year after year who consistently placed at regional levels and made it to the state level in specific events. I taught majority physical science and chemistry (and if physical science sounds weird to your ears, you live in an area that keeps the subjects separated: it refers to the teaching of chemistry for half the semester, and physics for the other half, and the courses of chemistry and physics are reserved for deep dives into those subjects for a full semester). When the county opened up the new Early College High School, I taught there for the first semester but left education for private business the following year.
When I moved to private business, I served explicitly as a sales associate for my first year but gradually picked up additional projects and responsibilities until I was serving as operations by 2020. I continued this path and was afforded a management title to reflect all the extra tasks I took upon myself anyway. These were the COVID years and were a logistically…interesting…time which kept me constantly on my toes having to make plans and change them constantly in response to the chaotic world. Surprisingly, I found the logistics quite fun and continued diving deeper into my exploration of operations systems in my quest to design scalable processes that I could, ultimately, automate.
I took a bit of a break so that I could take courses to reactivate my license and get back into education, and – more importantly, I think – to focus on improving my mental and physical health. I have started a series of personal projects that I am excited to dive into: this personal blog is one of them, and the rest I’ll leave for future posts.