| What is your most memorable childhood experience? | It would probably have to be numerous fishing and boating trips with my dad and uncles. We would often head out before sunrise loaded up with duffel bags full of gear, grab some breakfast on the way, and be out on the water as the sun was just coming up. Sometimes we fished, sometimes we snorkeled and dove to spear fish, and sometimes we just explored. I've been to some beautiful and amazing places because of these boat trips, and they remain some of my favorite places to this day because they are so untouched, so remote, and so peaceful. One powerful memory is of being taken spear fishing with my dad when I was very small, so small that I would simply hold onto his belt as he swam and he would pull me along effortlessly. It was a beautiful feeling of adventure and security combined. |
| What immediate family member do you closely identify with and why? | Probably with one of my sisters (the second oldest). Both of us chose to leave home to go to college, both of us really relished the experience and sought to get the most out of it, and we have similar interests and passions (books, travel, stocks). I wrote to her a lot while she was in college and I still in high school, and she knows me really well. We email each other all the time, and I know if I was ever in real trouble, she would likely be the first person I called. We seem to be the most similar in terms of our mindset and tend to agree on almost everything. We always are in agreement during family controversies or debates. I love and respect her for her warmth, her strong family (two sons and husband), her intellect, and her successful career (now happily on hold). I see what she has in her life and I want to have the same things. |
| What character traits do you admire in an individual? | I really like easygoing people. I have a good core group of friends, but some I get along better with than others. I get annoyed at people who are pompous or judgmental or extremely opinionated, or those who think they are better than others. People who are tolerant, imaginative, adventuresome, able to hold a conversation on any topic, be team players and have passionate interests are my best friends. I like people to be fair, accommodating, and flexible, open to new experiences and intelligent. I've always felt that even if you were stuck in an empty room with your best friends for hours, with nothing to do but hang out and talk, that you should be able to be entertained. |
| What is the funniest thing ever to happen to you? | I think the funniest thing that ever happened to me is probably also one of the worst things to happen to me. In college a group of friends and I took a seventeen hour road trip to go to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. We all piled in a van, drove through some really weird places on the way (Eutaw, Alabama comes to mind) and listened to music the whole way. Problem was, once we got to New Orleans, EVERYTHING started going wrong. Among that weekend's adventures: getting dumped by this girl I was crazy about; getting a stern lecture from some eighty year old woman after one girl in our group got way too drunk at a party and collapsed in the lobby of a fancy building after vomiting on some expensive drapes; meeting some really strange people; coming home at 5:00 AM and sleeping on the cold tile kitchen floor of my friend's apartment. Another person in our group got her foot run over by a horse-drawn cart. And to top it all off, several hours before we were to leave for the seventeen hour drive home, our rental car got stolen! Our friends in New Orleans ended up driving us all the way home. I had a big test the next day. All the tales from this trip didn't seem funny at the time, but years later it all just seems like a really long, really tragically funny story. |
| If time and money were not an issue, where would you travel and why? | I've already been to parts of East/West Africa and Europe, so I suppose my first choice would be to go to Asia or South America (India/China/Peru/Argentina). I would also love to go to the Himalayas, as I've never really seen the kinds of mountains that are there. I have this weird curiosity about going to the steppes of Mongolia, the open plains where Genghis Khan grew up. There's probably not too much to do there, but somehow the idea of such wide open spaces seems appealing. I'm a big history nut and love to know about the places I travel and get into the culture a little bit. I recently read a book about Marco Polo and all the places he traveled in his life were amazing. In high school I did a twenty page paper on Mayan culture so I've always wanted to visit some of their ancient cities in Central America, along with the Inca culture in Peru in places like Machu Picchu. In sum, if time and money were not an issue, I'd probably want to go just about everywhere. |
| When and if you ever have children, what would you like to pass on to them? | I would want my kids to be creative, intelligent, imaginative, and kind. I would of course want to pass down habits like hard work, discipline and responsibility, but I think those are more a function of the family and environment that a child is raised in and provided with than some inborn trait. I would hope I could pass on a passion for reading, learning and exploring, which I think are fundamental building blocks for everything in life. |
