Life Story

(Slightly abridged. Long. On purpose.)

I was born in October 1980 in Stanford, California, about a year and a half after my parents were married. I don't remember a great deal about my life there; we moved near Denver, Colorado around the time my first younger brother was born. (Five more younger brothers and sisters followed him; I'm the oldest of seven.)

My parents put my younger brother and me in preschool, but I didn't do well there; I was diagnosed with ADD (which was admittedly quite a popular diagnosis at the time) and the teachers told my parents that I would likely have trouble succeeding in the public school system. My parents, who had recently become Christians and were becoming acutely aware of the disintegrating moral fiber in public schools, decided that they could do a better job teaching me at home.

This they did, although the task became more challenging for them as my younger brothers and sisters kept appearing. I struggled with reading until around age 6, when I suddenly got it and started reading just about everything I could get my hands on. I loved the independence of being able to learn things on my own, and wound up becoming quite a bookish child. I had friends in the neighborhood and at church, although my social activities were mostly small and infrequent. Our house was right on a greenbelt that had a playground, huge rocks, tennis courts, a creek, and everything else a child might ask for. Our television died when I was 3 or 4, and it was never replaced.

One day when I was 10, my father brought home an old 286 PC that the office wasn't using. It had a CGA monitor, 40 megabytes of hard disk space, DOS 3.0, and Lotus 1-2-3. It was love at first sight; I played with it endlessly despite the fact that I didn't know what I was doing and didn't have anyone around to help -- at first. Help came in the form of a neighbor across the street named Nelson, who got me a copy of GW-Basic and later, C, which I did not care for much at the time.

We moved to North Carolina when I was 12 or so, and I continued my studies at home. I discovered the world of the BBS (bulletin board system), and soon was spending most of my free time on the computer, programming or talking to people on the BBS's, much to the dismay of my parents, who probably thought it was mostly teenaged daughters who would tie up the phone lines.

It was around that time -- age 14 -- that I began to realize, through my new and growing connections to the world outside, that Christianity was not a universally accepted or even popular belief system, and that if I wanted to make it my own, I had better have a good reason for doing so. I started reading about creation, evolution, and other topics; after a bit of a struggle I was baptized by the pastor of my parents' church in a small, private service. I cannot pinpoint the exact date I became a Christian, but that moment was a milestone; my pursuit of God was finally both public and personal.

At around 15 I started spending more time on the piano. I'd never had lessons but I'd played with it a little and gone through an extremely basic beginner's book with my mother's help; I started learning chords and trying to play things by ear and writing my own simple melodies. My parents no longer had much time to teach me, which was fine because I had advanced beyond their background in a few subjects and enjoyed self-study.

I got my first job a few months before I turned 16. I was an intern/programmer for GlaxoWellcome, a large pharmecutical company that had recently undergone a merger (and has gone through more mergers since). I didn't even work there for a full year, but I learned a lot about the world of professional programming, and I liked it.

16 was a very pivotal age. We moved to Washington. I was given dialup Internet access at home (and a second phone line to go with it), and proceeded to spend a disproportionate amount of time online. I started taking college courses at Columbia Basin College, a local junior college, about two weeks after I got a job as an intern at Lockheed Martin. I rode the bus between work and school (sometimes spending up to 3 hours a day on public transportation). My parents' rule for cars was simple: you can get your license when you can afford your own car, gas, and insurance. I got my permit instead, and waited.

At 18, I bought my first car, a six-cylinder, five-speed, dark red '91 Toyota Camry. I also got my first guitar, an acoustic I named Jasmine. I reached the end of the classes I could take at CBC and applied to WSU Tri-Cities, where I ran into difficulties because I did not have a high school diploma. I had superlative ACT scores and a stellar GPA at CBC, but WSU held firm: no diploma, no admittance. I caved in and took the GED, and they let me in. WSU-TC was mostly a night school, which suited me fine; I worked a little more than part time at Lockheed during the day to pay the tuition bills, although I had a few scholarships that helped a great deal, too.

I graduated from WSU with a degree in computer science and highest honors in December of 2001. I'd just turned 21. I spent most of that month applying to graduate schools ... I had never planned to stop at a bachelor's. I applied to Stanford, MIT, University of Washington, and UC Davis, the last of which was a "why not?" decision made after hearing my supervising professor at WSU-TC talk about the school in glowing terms. Unfortunately, a flood of out-of-work computer scientists had just been loosed from the dot-com crash, and entry was quite competitive; I wound up only making it into UC Davis. At the time, I was slightly disappointed, but I'm now very pleased -- I had prayed that God would make it clear where I was to go, and it doesn't get a good deal clearer than that.

I spent most of 2002 working at Lockheed. I moved to Davis that September. It's home for now, while I work on my master's degree. I expect that I'll be here through (at least) June of 2004. I plan to attend a Bible college (which? I haven't decided) the following Fall for about a year, and after that to find a job in the computer industry. But who knows where God will lead?