| What is your most memorable childhood experience? | The childhood experience I would choose as most memorable would be a cross-country trip I took when I was about eleven years old. That summer my aunt and uncle took me and four of my cousins on a two week-long road trip to Yellowstone Park, stopping to see many notable sights on the way. Some of things we saw were the Badlands of South Dakota, the Black Hills, a Native American reservation, the Big Horn mountains, Yellowstone and several of its many sights, Dinosaur National Monument and many others. The trip was a very wonderful and enriching experience on several levels. I saw many visually stunning natural wonders that I had only seen in magazines and TV up until those moments. I had the opportunity to interact with a very different culture and community, that of the Native Americans on the reservation we visited. I also got a chance to bond with some of my extended family, especially my similarly-aged cousins. We still speak of the trip to this day. Camping outside under the stars and staying in a lodge in the heart of Yellowstone Park were both fun and educational experiences and I also learned a lot about the natural richness of the West. |
| What immediate family member do you closely identify with and why? | I most closely identify with one of my mother’s younger brothers. He and I have very similar traits and personalities; we share a love of learning for its own sake in topics such as history, math, logic, science and engineering in addition to enthusiasm for outdoor activities like running, biking and hiking. He is older than I am, with enough age separation that I really looked up to him, but still close enough in age that we’ve been able to relate over the years. He was like an older brother, bringing me along with trips outdoors as well as well as serving as a mentor for my interest in science and reading. We drifted apart while he was in college and served in the armed forces, but later, after I graduated college and started working in the same field as my uncle, we re-established our close relationship. I greatly appreciate the mentoring and guidance he is able to provide to me as he has had a lot of success in our career field. I am lucky to have someone like that in my life, and we enjoy the close bond our families share. |
| What character traits do you admire in an individual? | The traits I admire most in people are intelligence, levelheadedness, loyalty, fairness and empathy. While everyone has these attributes to some degree, I have found that the people I hold in the highest esteem demonstrate these traits above the norm. I enjoy the company of intelligent, well-informed people who have a lot of interesting and thoughtful conversation. I enjoy having debates and philosophical arguments and appreciate people who have the intelligence and can passionately, but also calmly, disagree with other viewpoints. In the polarized world we seem to inhabit at present where people tend to talk at each other instead of with each other, I think the ability to have a spirited but respectful conversation with opposing sides of an issue is very admirable. I appreciate people who are able to empathize and understand other people in their lives, putting themselves in their shoes and looking at issues through their point of view. Lastly I think loyalty is a very admirable quality, sticking by one's friends and loved ones in spite of inconveniences that might push people to abandon people close to them. |
| What is the funniest thing ever to happen to you? | The funniest, perhaps not very humorous but still very odd thing to happen to me was while I was a teenager studying abroad in Germany. My host family and I had gone to see an opera one evening, had an enjoyable time (noting the oddness of the lead singer’s non-German name) and then didn’t think too much of it after that. Around the same time I was profiled in my host city’s newspaper; a day later I got a strange message from the editors of the newspaper. Apparently a person claiming to be from my hometown was also staying in the same German city as I was, had read the article profiling me and was interested in meeting me to connect. They gave me his contact information and left me to decide if I wanted to reply. I did respond and we arranged to grab coffee together in the city. We had a good time sharing our backgrounds and reveling in the coincidence of it all; he was about twenty years older than me and grew up one block away from my grandparents’ house, where I spent a lot of time as a child. He asked what sort of things I had been doing to take advantage of the differences of living in Europe and I mentioned how I just seen an opera recently, which I probably would never do in the US. At this point he coyly asked which opera I saw, which I told him. He asked me if I thought it was good, I told him I thought it was great. Then he let me know that he was the lead singer in that opera, which was the whole purpose for his being in the town when he was. We both had a great time marveling at the series of coincidences that had to take place for us to cross paths the way we did! My German family and friends really enjoyed hearing about this and were also equally astonished by how unlikely it had all been. |
| If time and money were not an issue, where would you travel and why? | If I could travel without concern for time or money, I would love to recreate traveling the silk road throughout Eurasia. I would start in Venice, work down the Balkan states, though Istanbul and Anatolia, across the central Asian states such as Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and finally ending in eastern China. I would find traveling such a historic and culturally diverse route to be fascinating and an experience never to forget. The money and time required would likely be an issue, due to the large geographical distance involved, as well as the varying levels of political and financial instability experienced in that area of the world. |
| When and if you ever have children, what would you like to pass on to them? | I would like to pass on to my children emotional maturity, a love of life and a passion for learning. I want to help them to develop and sustain the emotional maturity to try to always consider the feelings and well-being of others, and how their actions will affect the people around them. I believe it’s important to allow others to same ability to get enjoyment and satisfaction from life just as we want it for ourselves. I also think it’s important to find a healthy balance of following the rules of our society but also challenging injustice as we experience it or see it experienced by others, either directly or indirectly as circumstances dictate. I also want to help them develop an appreciation of the life they have, and how to try to get the most out of the world around us and limited time we have to experience it. Although we can never be sure of what our future holds and what advantages or disadvantages we will encounter, I would like them to try to fulfill as many of their dreams and interests as possible. Lastly I would want to impart a passion for always learning and enriching their minds with whatever topics interest them. I believe our minds are our most valuable asset and I believe it’s crucial to always work to expand our knowledge and understanding of the world and people around us in order to live the best life possible. |
