About Me
I am currently a student at the University of Florida, in Gainesville, Florida where I’m studying Chemical Engineering. I graduate December 2001, at which time I plan to enroll in the Masters Program for Materials Science and Engineering here at UF. That’s my current life, now onto my history.
I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on June 26th, 1979. Three days later, I was given to my adoptive parents in the little town of Palmyra, Indiana. People always ask me if I want to look for my adoptive parents, but I don’t really have a desire to look for them. I know their names, and have actually tried to look for them on the Internet, but I couldn’t find them. Maybe one day.
Anyway, my family and I lived in Indiana for four years before my dad took a job at NAS Jacksonville, which meant we moved to the wonderful city of Orange Park, Florida. We have lived there ever since. After a few years, we made short hop across the city to a home that we had built in Massey Villas. Then, after I came here to Gainesville, out of nowhere, my parents (mainly my dad) wanted to move. There was this one house that was up for sale in the Orange Park Country Club that my parents really liked. They had seen it before, and thought that it was a nice house. Then one day they were driving back there, and it was for sale, so they decided to buy it. So now, that’s where we live.
Anyway, I went to Lakeside Elementary School, then to Lakeside Junior High. There weren't too many teachers here that had too many influences on me. There were two who had the most on me, my Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Henderson, and Mr. Herx, my Gifted teacher for 7-9th grades. I have Mrs. Henderson to thank for making me a Gator. My class was her first class ever; she had just graduated from the University of Florida. She had the most influence on me mostly because it's Kindergarten; you have to be influenced in someway by the new experience of school. Mr. Herx was (is) a great man, who was the first teacher who I had ever had who encouraged independent thinking on our parts rather than the "I'm the teacher, I know everything, do as I tell you to do" mentality that most of the other teachers had. I hate teachers like that. Anyway, he was by far the best teacher I had ever had up to this point in my life, and I always looked forward to going to his class. I had him all throughout Jr. High, in 7th grade for Life Science, or something like that, 8th grade for Gifted English, and 9th grade for Gifted Elective. Gifted Elective was more like a class on everything. We learned lots in that class.
Then came the almighty High School, which was Orange Park High. It was a good school and I enjoyed myself thoroughly there. It was here that I met Ms. Hansen, my Chemistry teacher, and Mrs. Kung, my mathematics teacher. They probably had the most influence on me, although there were others like Mr. Walters, the Probability and Statistics Sadist, under whom I also had the pleasure of being a student. Thanks to Ms. Hansen (a slave-driving woman who expected us to devote all of our attention to chemistry, and more specifically, her class) I decided that I wanted to be a chemical engineer. So, my junior year, I took AP Chemistry under Ms. Hansen and learned all about the wonderful world of chemistry, or, at least, the basics. That was probably the most work I have ever put into a class, with maybe the exception of AP Calculus, which is coming up shortly. But all my hard work paid off with a 5 on the AP exam. My other passion, mathematics, was nurtured by Mr. Walters (a war-warped, sadistic, hilarious man) and by Mrs. Kung (a delightful, slightly out-of-it, Asian-accented, slightly-over-middle-aged woman). Mrs. Kung was my Algebra II teacher in 10th grade. It was a difficult class at the time, but I learned my algebra. The next year was my introduction to Mr. Walters (who, by the way, was wearing a skull and crossbones tie and spoke in a very low, monotone, threatening voice for the first few days of class) in Math Analysis. Then came the wonderful world of AP Calculus with Mrs. Kung. I had had a whole year away from Mrs. Kung, thus I was in Mrs. Kung withdrawal. So a full year of Mrs. Kung in AP Calc was welcome to both me and my classmates who had had her with me in Algebra II. Needless to say, it was a very grueling class. But, I pulled through and earned a 5 on the AP exam. Then I graduated; 10th in my class of 500+. I was satisfied. Pretty much all my life I wanted to come to UF, so when I got accepted, I made plans to come here. Which catches you up on where I am.