Biography

Early Life

I was born in California in 1990. My mother, brother and I moved to Utah in 1993 and I've called Utah home ever since. I have a very mixed and complicated family, but for all intents and purposes I have one older brother, one younger brother, and one younger sister. My younger sister serendipitously happened to be born on my 10th birthday in 2000, making her exactly 10 years my junior. I served chiefly as babysitter and laundress in my childhood home, and so I gained excellent mediation skills by resolving arguments between my younger siblings. One might think that their 8-year age difference would have some mitigating effect on the volume of their disagreements, but alas, this was unfortunately not the case.

I was raised in a family with a love of the outdoors, so many of my childhood vacations were spent either on road trips or camping trips. The most extravagant vacations we took were when my mother's father rented out cabins in Fish Lake, a freshwater lake within the Fishlake National Forest in Sevier County, Utah. I didn't know it at the time, but this forest is actually home to what is considered the largest living organism on earth - Pando. I grew to associate the beautiful aspen trees with the happy memories from these vacations, and learning the aforementioned fun fact only makes me love them all the more.

Higher Education

Upon my high school graduation in June 2008, I decided to attend the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do, but I began my university career by majoring in biology. This subject did not grab me the way I'd hoped, so I quickly changed my focus to a B.A. in German Language after only one semester. I enjoyed my studies in German, but still didn't know what I would do with a degree in a foreign language. Due to some extraneous circumstances, I was forced to put my schooling on hold after my first year of study, and I did not return to school until late 2014 when I enrolled at Salt Lake Community College for computer science.

Computer science, as it turned out, was my calling. I grew up with computers in my home from the time I was very young, and they had always fascinated me. It was this passion that lead me to finally pursue a degree in computer science. At Salt Lake Community College, I was introduced to programming in Java and MySQL. If you're curious for more details on my educational background, please head over to my resume page.

Vacations

My partner and I have a love of travel, and as such we've taken several fun vacations together. As this is a personal page about me, my life and interests, I've created an interactive map to show the different places we've visited in 2016. Clicking on the bright green states will take you to some photos from our adventures. I'll update this map periodically whenever we visit new places - stay tuned!