Board Thread:Creation Box/@comment-3503487-20160327164931

Gender: Male

Birthday: November 28, 1985

Face claim: Julian Morris

Family/Housemates: Grant currently lives alone in Barfield.

Address: 198 Pine Street, Barfield

Personality: Grant is a great mentor and inspiring speaker, which leads him to a lot of success as a teacher. Many of his students love his enthusiastic and friendly demeanor. He makes himself approachable and makes jokes easily. He is a passionate guy. When he gets excited about certain subjects he'll keep talking and seem incredibly invested in what he's talking about. Sometimes people may find him a bit of a nerd but also charming in his passions, whereas he may be absolutely unknowledgeable about other things.

However, Grant is humble and honest and tends to express his feelings genuinely. He values straightforwardness and open communication, which carries into what he values in his personal friendships and relationships, as he isn't very good at reading people and can often take things at face value. He can also be oblivious to his surroundings at times and may often need things to be pointed out bluntly to him. Grant also tends to be very willing to try things and see how they go before he passes judgment, but he may dive headfirst into a situation before thinking too much about the repercussions.

History: Grant grew up in a suburban household in Miduna Beach. His family wasn't wealthy, and he was the fourth child of Ryan and Lillian Johnson. He has an older brother, two older sisters, and he's the youngest of the family. Growing up, his family took care of most of the family responsibilities and didn't expect him to feel responsible for taking care of other people. However, they did expect him to focus at school. Throughout his childhood, Grant enjoyed exploring things, going outside and examining the outdoors, taking care of plants, and taking apart his toys to see how they were constructed. He was a bright child and enjoyed some parts of school while being bored by others. Overall, he excelled in school, but tended to do poorly in some subjects he wasn't interested in. He also made friends readily.

Grant played basketball casually at Miduna Beach High School. He wasn't particular good, but he enjoyed playing and was always interested in sports. In his pre-teen years, Grant found his classmates often interested in people of the opposite sex. He didn't feel the same way, which he later attributed to simply developing later than his friends, as he found himself crushing on various classmates, both female and male, throughout high school. Girls in high school found him attractive and some asked him out. He casually dated a couple girls but never was that into them.

Grant was the second of his family to attend college, after his older sister. At University of Miduna Beach, he studied biology, intending to become a scientific researcher someday, but after getting a student job in a lab, helping with cleaning and recording equipment, he realized that he hated being in the lab and watching his colleagues do experiments was far from the actual science he enjoyed. However, he did still love science and reading on the latest discoveries, and he did okay in his coursework. In his sophomore year, he started working in a program tutoring high school students and found that he truly loved it, making him consider teaching as a career. One of his friends he met from the program introduced him to Amelia Cruz, another student at UMB. He and Amelia hit it off rather quickly and formed a strong relationship, continuing to date through college.

After graduating, Grant decided to get his teaching credentials to teach high school science and math. He and Amelia decided to move in together, and things worked out well. They had an intimate relationship and had very smooth and comfortable communication that kept them rather happy. After living together for several months, Grant proposed to Amelia, and the two became engaged and got married nine months later. Neither of them really wanted kids, so they just pursued their careers and interests separately and continued to be happy.

Grant was a successful teacher, and he became popular among his students, spending a lot of time outside of class helping students, preparing his lesson plans, and participating in student activities. He also took on a role as basketball coach briefly when the main coach was out and was rather involved in their athletic division as well. He also began doing scientific journaling to keep up with his interests in that area. Meanwhile, Amelia pursued graduate school and got a job at Barfield Daily that kept her very busy.

He began noticing that he and Amelia weren't as close as they used to be, and he no longer felt attraction to her like he used to, which he attributed to them being busy in their jobs and the natural course of a marriage. They were still enjoying life and he didn't see any big issues. On one occasion, he attended a scientific conference in Los Angeles, where he met many brilliant scientists, including a man he found incredibly intellectual and enjoyable to talk to. He felt a sense of attraction to him but figured it was just admiration. He also noticed himself fantasizing often about other men but figured it was normal to have fantasies.

Grant turned thirty in 2015, and this milestone gave him the kick to realize that he had been in denial for a while about his attraction to Amelia and his sexuality in general. After a few days of searching on the internet for other stories and researching his feelings, he worked up the courage to come out to Amelia as gay and tell her that he's no longer attracted to him. Amelia was upset but understanding, and the two decided to get a divorce. However, they did still care for each other as friends and agreed to stay in touch.

A couple weeks after the divorce was finalized in early 2016, free to explore his sexuality, he met a man who was a single father named Joel. The two hit it off really quickly and began dating. Joel was the father of one of his students.

Describe your character in a word. Self-discovering

How your character would describe himself in a word: Open-minded 