My name is Justin Durante and here is a little background about myself. I was originally born in Elk Grove, IL and shortly thereafter moved to Bartlett, IL where my older brother and I grew up for most of our lives. Once we moved into Bartlett, I started attending Wayne Elementary School. From my early childhood and into my teen years, I was heavily involved in travel sports. Soccer, baseball, basketball, and wrestling were the sports that I enjoyed and competed in. As time went on and I grew older, juggling sports with school became too much of a time demand. Because of that, I started focusing on the one sport that I enjoyed the most – baseball, which I eventually started traveling around the Midwest because of. I played sports from grade school, through junior high and into high school. I attended South Elgin High school, where I was excelling in my math and science classes. I eventually knew that I wanted to focus my time and effort into those subjects and, ultimately, paved a path for my career choice today. In high school, I picked up my first job delivering pizzas at a local Italian restaurant. During the summer of my freshmen year of high school, I met my wonderful girlfriend, Shiann, who I have been with ever since.
After high school, I was unsure about what I wanted to study in college or what careers I wanted to pursue. That heavily influenced my decision to attend Elgin Community College. This allowed me to explore my options and save some cash while still staying close to my family and friends. I eventually determined that I wanted to pursue an engineering degree. During my time at ECC, I took my first programming course. After taking that course, I was hooked on programming and knew that I wanted to get into Computer Science. After two and a half years of community college, I transferred to the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign to pursue a degree in Computer Engineering. During my time at UIUC, I landed my second job as a Lab Consultant for Engineering Workstations. As a Lab Tech, I learned a fair amount of networking and knowledge of Linux operating systems. I spent two and a half years at UIUC to finish out my degree. Once I graduated, I left my job as a consultant and started pursuing my post graduate career options. Eventually, I found my first job out of college working at DISTek Integration as an Embedded Software Developer. I am currently working on-site at a customer location in Dubuque, where I have been enjoying every minute of my current assignment.
Dubuque is a great town that has been able to accommodate all of my different hobbies and interests that I desire. While I am not working, I enjoy spending my days golfing, snowboarding, playing video games, and hanging out with friends. Since my girlfriend is from my hometown, I also try and travel back on the weekends as much as I can to visit her, family, and friends.
