| What is your most memorable childhood experience? | The summer after fourth grade, my parents took me and my brother to Mexico for a couple of months. My father went to study Spanish in an immersive environment and my parents thought experiencing life in another country would be good for me and my brother. The experience left a very deep impression on me because it was my first time living outside of the United States for an extended period of time and it taught me what a person really has to do to learn a foreign language. When I went to college, I was interested in Asian languages, and that childhood experience led me to study abroad in Japan for a year and also move to China after I graduated, where I stayed for about 10 years. Although I'm back in the US now, I do think I would like to move back to northern Europe again if I ever have an opportunity to do so. |
| What immediate family member do you closely identify with and why? | My father has had more influence on my life than any other person. He grew up poor in Cincinnati, Ohio, but rose to the upper middle class through education, eventually becoming a tenured university professor. I think one of the main reasons why I am pursuing graduate study in economics is because I know what graduate school did for my father. |
| What character traits do you admire in an individual? | I think honesty is the most important trait a person can have. It is the foundation of trust in all kinds of relationships. Self improvement is also much more difficult and sometimes even impossible if one isn't honest with oneself. |
| What is the funniest thing ever to happen to you? | At my first job in China some of my students approached me on behalf of the principal of a nearby elementary school to ask if I would judge a speech contest and sing a song in exchange for some money. I agreed, but I didn't really know what I was in for. It turned out that the audience consisted of hundreds of people. I was in the countryside, so nobody around me was used to being around foreigners, so this made everything pretty awkward, especially the part when I had to sing. Overall I think it was a pretty draining but also funny experience. |
| If time and money were not an issue, where would you travel and why? | I would probably go to Norway. I spent most of 2020 in Finland and absolutely loved it. One of the main reasons was the natural landscape of Finland, which is very flat with lots of trees and rivers and lakes everywhere you go. Norway seems similar, but it's much more mountainous. |
| When and if you ever have children, what would you like to pass on to them? | I would like to pass on my work ethic and passion for learning. I have faced a lot of challenges as an adult, but I have always managed to overcome them because of those two things. The most important thing any child needs to do is learn how to survive in the world on their own, and that is much easier to achieve with the right mindset and skills. |
