I grew up in Folsom, a suburb of Sacramento. My path to Cal was pretty typical - I did a few service clubs (including an after-school math program for elementary school students! :D), got good grades, and eventually applied. For the personal essay, I decided I hated writing about myself and instead wrote about inefficiency in global poverty interventions. For a long time, I had considered majoring in Cognitive Science or Neuroscience, but I'd say it was this near-fanatical obsession with effectiveness and efficiency that caused me to lean toward EECS. I knew I would find people who thought like me, and I knew I would make good things.
I admit I haven't done very much programming, especially not personal projects (something I hope to change next semester). I walked into Cal with about half an online course's worth of Python knowledge acquired the summer before. I know Python, Java, and Scheme, and a little bit of Javascript. I really like functional programming and am slowly working my way through Learn You a Haskell for Great Good.
I enjoy reading, writing fiction and verse, drawing, singing, playing board games, learning languages, translating movies and songs, and studying cognitive science.
This April my friends and I went to a Franz Ferdinand concert - it was my very first live concert (I know, I know), and it was great! I always wear the T-shirt everywhere.
Besides TAing for 61A, I'm taking a class called The Mind and Language, planning a DeCal on effective altruism tentatively called "The Greater Good: Science, Reason, and Priorities in Making a Better World", planning a computer science summer camp, and hopefully writing a science fiction novella involving a lot of recursion.
That's a good question; I don't really know. I guess I always think of my students as my friends, and lean towards explaining things the way I would to a friend taking the course with me. I like my teaching to be heavily driven by questions from my students.