Childhood Field grew up in
Penngrove, California. He is Jewish. Field was an only child, named after the poet
Dylan Thomas. His father worked as a respiratory therapist at
Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital and his mother as a resource specialist teacher at
Thomas Page Elementary School. He also participated in the arts as a child, acting with credits in TV ads for
eToys.com and for
Windows XP, and taking an interest in design starting in middle school. Field attended high school at
Technology High School, a magnet school for
science, technology, engineering, and math on the campus of
Sonoma State University. He also worked with social media researcher
Danah Boyd, who ultimately wrote one of Field's
letters of recommendation for college. Field was an involved member of Brown's computer science department: In 2011, he organized a
hackathon in which 150students participated, and starting in late 2011, he co-chaired Brown's CS Departmental Undergraduate Group. During a semester away from Brown, Field applied to the
Thiel Fellowship, a grant awarded to young entrepreneurs by investor
Peter Thiel on the condition that they drop out of college for at least two years. Field's parents were initially not supportive. Field recalled in 2012, "They totally did not want me to apply." His father told the same interviewer, "Pretty much everything we earned went to education." In its second year, the Thiel Fellowship had attracted 500student applicants; 40finalists were named and 20 were ultimately selected. Field was awarded the Thiel Fellowship in May2012 and dropped out of Brown to accept it. Field had originally intended to pursue a degree in math and computer science and graduate after four years. Field said in a 2012 interview that Brown had been his "dream school" but that he "wasn't feeling like [he] was getting as much out of it as before." Field said in that interview that he intended to go back to Brown one day, noting the school allowed leaves of absence for up to five years. == Career ==