A talented tennis player as a youngster, David Foster Wallace attended Amherst College and majored in philosophy before switching his focus to writing fiction. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1985 and turned his senior thesis into the basis for "The Broom of the System." After earning a master's degree in fine arts from the University of Arizona, Wallace began teaching writing at Illinois State University in Normal in 1993. In 2002 he was named the first Roy E. Disney professor of creative writing at Pomona College in Claremont.