A brief biography... and then some

At the outset of summer 2007, I had just completed my sophomore year at Mount Holyoke College, where I was majoring in Computer Science and minoring in Philosophy. At MHC, I served as a Teaching Assistant for CS101: Problem-Solving & Structured Programming, CS102: Intro. to Object-Oriented Programming, and CS221: Systems & Assembly Language. Outside of the classroom, I was heavily involved in choral music, first with Chorale, then with Glee Club, and finally as a member of the Chamber Singers, directed by Kimberly Dunn. I was also a part of the V-8s, the continuously longest-running women's a cappella group in the nation.

I spent all but one of the first 18 years of my life as a military child in Seoul, South Korea. My dad bought our first computer in '93; it was a Packard Bell with a 486 processor running Windows 3.11, and had... a 4x CD-ROM drive! I spent many hours on that machine playing games: Commander Keen, Jill of the Jungle, Duke Nukem, other Apogee platformers, Lemmings 2, WarCraft II, Dune II--the list goes on and on. As I got older, I came to be the proud and loving owner of various Nintendo consoles, and resolved to one day work as a designer for Nintendo EAD. Come 10th grade, I took Seoul American High School's only programming class--aptly titled "Programming in C++"--thereby embarking on my formal study of computing. The next semester, I studied Java through DoDEA's distance learning program with Rick Southard, whose constant encouragement and push for the creation of an AP Computer Science AB course on my behalf have assuredly influenced my development as a scholar.

Since starting a new life in the states, I've constantly been forced to reconsider everything, ranging from my sociopolitical values to my lifelong ambitions. I've had a less than stellar time at MHC, which I found to be extremely socially suffocating, and academically so to a lesser extent. I was on the verge of transferring to Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science, but I realized that it was too early to practically devote my entire undergraduate career to a single discipline, that grad school would be the right time and place. Now I'm on strictly voluntary leave from MHC and am staying with my parents in Hawaii (note: it's not all sunshine and coconuts), reevaluating my goals, my priorities, my values. You're probably asking yourself what kind of HUGE idiot passes up the opportunity to study CS at CMU, and I will concede that there have been a few times where I've wondered the same myself. But after so many years, I found myself having only created a single computer game, whereas I had notebooks full of stories and characters and sketches. Today, my ultimate goal is to share my ideas and stories with others, but I still see the importance in directing the evolution of games, especially considering what asinine crap is created for girls, and the exploitative and immature images of women that are marketed to boys and men alike. Whether I end up as a game designer, a professor, a writer, or a rock star, I need the well-rounded intellectual faculties that only a great liberal arts education can foster. So here's to another painful round of transfer applications!

...so what now? Currently, I'm toying with aspirations such as writing a semi-autobiographical bildungsroman, interning at McSweeney's or any place that'll have me, running off to the city and joining a rock band, and applying for a Fulbright grant to reunite Korean adoptees with their biological parents (this is a long-term goal). I'd also like to start blogging about feminism, race issues, and how the plague of corporate mass media perpetuates WASP hegemony in this country, complete with pithy (or maybe not) critical analyses of pop culture. Besides gaming (Valkyrie Profile is, conceptually, the most awesome video game of all time), music, and literature, I enjoy indulging in the groundbreaking programming VH1 has to offer, and rockin' out. Especially to Weezer. If you're Rivers Cuomo and you're reading this, then my answer is: yes, I will marry you and love you forever, regardless of how creepy my old roommate Miki thinks you are. If you'd like to experience the rare output of my creative energies, please click here.

Congratulations and thanks to you if you read this all the way through! Brevity has never been one of my virtues.