Patterson grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, near South Boulevard, and attended Loveless Academic Magnet Program.
[1] He then studied engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and entered a graduate psychology program at Vanderbilt University.
[2] Patterson left the graduate program at Vanderbilt to accept a "prestigious Disney|ABC Writing Fellowship", which gained him access to career opportunities in film and television.
[3] For seven years, he worked on Psych as a co-executive producer, and in 2019 he returned to sign with 20th Century Fox Television.
[3] He is the developer of and executive producer of The Wonder Years revival, which premiered on ABC in September 2021.