W. Jeffrey Wilson's
Personal Life

My personal life has many dimensions:

• I have a wonderful family.

  I am married to Jennifer Cook, a neuroscientist and the English language editor of Acta Neurobiologiae Experimentalis, a journal published in Poland. She served for many years as coordinator and then associate director of Albion College's Foundation for Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities.  She is currently Director of Research and Evaluation at Starr Commonwealth.  Jenny is a wonderful mother to twins Natalie and Nicole and to our son Christopher, and she is a great stepmother to my other two kids, Greg and Jessica. Natalie and Nicole are busy being 7-year-olds.  Christopher is 14 years old and keeps us going constantly. He plays soccer, piano, and trumpet.  He's currently a red belt in Tae Kwan Do and expects to make black within a year. Greg is working on a PhD in aerospace engineering at the University of Delft in The Netherlands, and Jessica is a sophomore at the University of Michigan.

   

• I enjoy several hobbies.

  My 1939 Chevy sat until the  summer of 2005 after the birth of my daughters in 2000 (who has time to keep it running?).  With a little bit of coaxing I got it back on the road, and in the summer of 2006 I finally broke down and tried my hand at body work and paint. It no longer looks like I just pulled it out of a barn, but it's still far from perfect.

  I use linux and other free software as much as possible, because I tired of Microsoft's Blue-Screen-of-Death.  The transition has been rewarding.  I've also been using LaTeX for most writing, including what used to be PowerPoint presentations.  It's challenging but it produces nice-looking documents.

  I read a lot -- usually nonfiction or science fiction.
  
  

• I like to travel.

  Jenny and I spent 6 months in 1993 in Warsaw, Poland, at the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology. I was on sabbatical, working in the lab of prof. K. Zielinski, and Jenny taught conversational English and scientific writing in English. We had a great time, and saw much of Poland. We also spent a week in Budapest, Hungary, at the first Central European Neuroscience meeting.

  I returned to Poland in 1994 for a 3-week visit, and went to the Gordon Research Conference on Catecholamines in Italy in 1995. In addition to this, Jenny and I have seen much of the U.S. as a result of the Society for Neuroscience's policy of holding its annual meetings in lots of different cities, and the Pavlovian Society's policy of having its meeting follow the president.
  
  

• I have played unusual sports.

  I played soccer throughout middle school and high school, playing fullback and earning the MVP award my senior year. In college I moved on to a more esoteric sport, cricket. Haverford College had the first, and has the last, varsity cricket team in the country. A large portion of the land owned by the college was donated on the condition that cricket be played there in perpetuity (unless this is a campus legend), probably explaining the college's support for the team. We played club teams from Philadelphia, Washington, and New York, and twice toured Canada.

  I currently think about working out at the gym three times a week. I used to be a serious paintball player.  This surprises me and bothers my wife. I can easily make the fantasy/reality distinction and recognize the sport for what it is: a fast-paced and exciting game of strategy, teamwork, and skill, not a survivalist wargame.  I enjoyed the adrenaline rush produced by the sport, but I remain somewhat surprised that a peace-loving war-protesting child of the 60's like myself ever tried it. My article relating neuroscience and paintball appeared in the September '96 issue of Action Pursuit Games, and a few other articles and photos by me were published in that and other paintball-related publications. (And in case you're wondering, the phrase above my goggles, reproduced for greater legibility, didn't seem to help my game at all!)

The home where I grew up is now a bed-and-breakfast!