WHERE DID YOU GROW UP? WHAT WAS YOUR PATH TO CAL? I grew up in Fresno (which many people might not know is the raisin capital of the world). I figure that a bunch of farmers moved to Fresno hoping to make wine and realized that their grapes shriveled up way too quickly! I think the more interesting part of my story is once I got to Cal. I came to Berkeley and had no idea what I wanted to study. A friend of mine talked me into taking CS61a, and then the next semester talked me into CS61b, and then the next semester talked me into CS61c. I figured that EECS was for people who were much smarter than me - but it turned out that I REALLY liked it. People always tried to tell me that I shouldn't be a computer scientist, because I am too "social" - but I couldn't be happier that I didn't listen to them. HOW MUCH PROGRAMMING HAVE YOU DONE (& WHAT LANGUAGES) I'm really excited about programming in Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu/). It is an awesome because you can make games and movies pretty easily! Download it and try it out for yourself! I did my undergrad in EECS here at Cal and I learned Scheme from Dan Garcia when I took CS61a from him in 2001. More recently I have been using Scheme as a TA last Spring for CS3L and as an instructor for CS3L this past summer. In addition to learning some langugates in classes at Berkeley, I also worked as a programmer using Java, C and C++. WHAT ARE YOUR HOBBIES I love to play games: Mafia, Cranium, Set, Bridge and Clue-Museum Caper are my favorite 5 games and EVERYONE should know how to play! If you haven't heard of one or more of them - don't despair - we can play sometime! I like to sew, bake, cook, sing in the car and dance! WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR TALENTS & SKILLS I love american sign language (ASL). Berkeley Community College is actually a little hub for ASL - so you should definitely take advantage of their courses while you live here! HAVE YOU DONE ANYTHING REMARKABLE? HAS ANYTHING MEMORABLE HAPPENED TO YOU? I had the opportunity to study abroad in London my 3rd year in college. It was the BEST experience. I filled my time while I was there traveling, cooking, baking and playing soccer (football). It was the best (and only) 10 month vacation of my life! WHAT COMMITMENTS WILL BE CONSUMING YOUR CYCLES THIS SEMESTER? I'm getting my Ph.D. in Education and my Masters in Computer Science so I'll be taking both education and computer science classes. This semester I'm taking: - Constructive Epistomology (what is knowledge and how do we know about it) - Video Analysis (how do we analyze videos to see what people know) - Designing Rural Computing Applications (a perspective on one way to use computer science experience to make social impacts) - Ruby on Rails (making awesome web applications)