After I graduated with a 4-year degree in horticulture, I was not ready to start a career yet. There was so much more I wanted to learn, beyond the confines of the state university. The college was excellent, I’m not disparaging it, and yet I found it very limiting. This was a few years ago, and legal cannabis was only available in a few states. I knew this was the future, so I wanted to keep studying the marijuana plant. My quest for knowledge eventually led me here to one of the great hotspots for cannabis cultivation, the city of Albuquerque, NM. Some of the greatest and most innovative minds in the history of American cannabis call Albuquerque home. If I wanted to be the best I needed to learn from the best, so I also decided to make Albuquerque my home. I didn’t apply for a job at a cannabis dispensary, because selling weed wasn’t my goal. I found the business owners of Albuquerque and followed them to their cannabis grow operations. I wanted to study from them, to learn more about the best cannabis strains, but ultimately I wanted to start my own farm. Eventually this would mean leaving Albuquerque, but for the next few years I was determined to use this city as my version of Grad School. So far it’s been a lot more difficult than expected, because the cannabis industry in Albuquerque is very tight-knit, and they don’t like outsiders who ask a lot of questions. I won’t quit, I will keep trying to make it work in Albuquerque.