My career path hasn’t exactly been a straight line. But, then again, whose is? If I had to pin down a starting point, I would say it all began at a Kinko’s in West Covina, Calif.

Yes, you read that correctly — Kinko’s.

That wonderland of copiers and fax machines was where I worked to pay for my college education at Cal State Fullerton. It was at Kinko’s that I first got a taste of Photoshop, Illustrator and myriad other design programs.

Now, being a journalism major, I didn’t think too much about all of this at the time. I had my heart set on winning a Pulitzer Prize and setting the world on fire with my reporting and breathtaking prose. Little did I know that what I picked up at the now-defunct copy shop would lead me to where I am today.

After graduating from Cal State Fullerton in 2003, I started working for the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group (Whittier Daily News, Pasadena Star-News and the San Gabriel Valley Tribune) as an intern, and then later as a freelance reporter.

While freelancing for the Highlanders, one of the news group’s weeklies that churns out 11 editions, I was drafted to design several issues. My editors liked my work, and when a full-time position opened up on the copy desk, I was promoted.

After SGVN, it was on to the Ventura County Star, where I had the opportunity to design everything but the sports section. It was at the Star that I learned how to better manage time, projects and people, helping to run the copy desk periodically and guiding art direction on special projects.

Feeling I was missing out after not taking a stab at sports while at the Star, I moved on to FOXSports.com as a staff editor for the national sports website. While at FOX Sports I edited and produced content for the homepage, the sections fronts and the sports module on MSN.com.

After two years of working online I returned to newspapers, designing eye-popping pages for the Orange County Register. Little did I know everything would come full circle when MediaNews Group added the Register to its portfolio, and I was once again designing some of the papers I had started out working on when I had graduated from college.

I’ve done a little bit of everything over my career, and, I must say, I like it that way. I’ve always loved learning new things or building on what I already do well. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, so hard work is never a problem, and if there’s ever a jammed copier, I’m your guy.