I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. I believed that I wanted to go to Bowdoin College up until I was a junior in high school, because my whole family is from Maine and a lot of my relatives went to Bowdoin. But after I took a trip to Northern California and visited Cal (and Stanford… but we don’t have to talk about that), I had my heart set on becoming a Golden Bear.
My freshman year of high school, I learned how to code in Scratch. I had completely forgotten about coding when I had to code in C++ for a physics class I took my senior year. I didn’t actually learn C++ in that class, though, but figuring out what words and symbols to use in what places to make LEDs flash made me remember how much fun coding was, which inspired me to take CS10 my first semester at Cal. Since then, I’ve programmed in Snap! and Python in CS10, Python, Scheme, and SQL in CS61A, and Java in CS61B.
I love singing. I’m a member of the a cappella group Cal Jazz Choir. I also enjoy cooking, playing tennis, and petting every dog I see. I’ve recently taken up knitting.
I have very flexible shoulders. I can hyperextend them, so it looks like my shoulders are popping out of their sockets.
When I was a senior in high school, my choir worked with the LA Master Chorale to write an Oratorio about the Japanese Internment Camps during World War II. I was interviewed by PBS about the project. A few months later, I was at the Grand Canyon with my family when my grandma got a all from her sister, who said she was watching PBS when all of a sudden I was on the TV.
In addition to reading for CS10, I’ll be taking CS70 and EE16A, a yoga class and a tennis class, and a few other classes. I’m still going to be singing with and managing Cal Jazz Choir, and I’m part of the staff for an on campus club, Pioneers in Engineering, that hosts a robotics competition for Bay Area high schools.