blast from the past

mostly i think i like filling out forms because i like typing (i don't care what i'm typing, i just like typing... :P) and i like filling out answers to things i know the answers to :P either way, ruthie's blog provided me with another one to fill out... enjoy :P

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25 years ago: my dad had a 20 acre farm in NE Illinois less than a mile from his parents house' and worked for a nearby florist. my mom was a Lutheran grade school teacher in the next town over. me? i wouldn't be born for another 6 months. i was born in june 1981.

20 years ago: at age 4, since we lived in a farm town where school began with kindergarten, i spent the day at babysitters' houses while mom was teaching, and then made trouble around my parents' farm with whatever dad let me help him do (from feeding birds and cats to helping with plants) when at home. when my dad got offered the job of general foreman and horticulturist at the memphis zoo (in TN), i totally thought he had made up the name Tennessee when he asked what i would think of living there. we moved in july 1986, just after my 5th birthday.

15 Years ago: age 9, i was halfway done with 4th grade. since for K-8 i went to the lutheran school my mom taught at, she had been my 2nd grade teacher, and all my teachers along the way ever since were all her friends.
*that year, during the 1st 6-week academic period after christmas, my teacher had a contest where she kept a chart of all the As each of us earned in any class and for every 10 As you got some sort of reward (candy bar, extra computer time, etc.). at the end of the 6 weeks i had the most As in the class, so my extra reward was having lunch at the place of my choice away from school with the teacher. i chose taco bell. :P
*my dad bought 2 turkeys that year that we named after my principal and his wife (who happened to be my teacher),... they made the yearbook when mom brought them into her 2nd grade class to visit the week before thanksgiving.
*my two remaining great grandparents died during may of 1991... we had just been to visit both of them the previous summer, so i'm lucky to have fairly clear memories of both.
*besides school, i played basketball (not my favorite, but i was tall for my age which helped with making baskets), volleyball (which i adored, and had nearly a perfect underhand serve naturally), and was in girl scouts.

10 Years ago: january 1996, i was halfway through my freshman year of high school. after attending the same parochial school with 25 kids per grade level all the way through 8th grade, high school with a class of a five or six hundred was insanely huge, but after a week or two, i was ok with it and making good friends who i still keep in touch with. i played flute in the school band and was already scoring well on state-wide math contests. 1996 was also the year i discovered contact lenses, which was a very good thing. late 1996 was one of the roughest times of my life though -- both my grandfathers died, 2 weeks apart, over christmas break of my sophomore year of high school and it took me years to start to deal with that satisfactorily...

5 years ago: january 2001, i was halfway through my sophomore year of college. the last 2 years of HS went well, as did my 1st year of college, but when my grandma started having strokes in the fall of 2000, my unresolved angst w/ my grandfathers deaths coupled with my worries about my grandma sent me into one of the darkest years of my life. for spring semester, several of my friends, worried about me and how i was reacting to stresses, convinced me to go to counseling for the semester, which turned out to be a really good thing. when not stressed and freaking out about my grandmother's health, i ran several math camp type programs through the university math department and was a team leader for altar guild at the university chapel, both of which i fairly well enjoyed.

3 years ago: january 2003, i was starting my final semester of college. i had enough credits to graduate in 3 years, but decided to stay an extra year so that i could spend a semester abroad. i spent fall 2002 in budapest, hungary studying math. it was the best 4 months of my life to date and i adored every minute of it. in a way i've never had simultaneously before, i was (1) in a really challenging but really supportive math community AND (2) in a really supportive and encouragaing faith community of people my age, along with the added bonus of (3) having a whole other culture to intrigue me and to explore. i've not had both (1) and (2) to such that degree simultaneously at any other point of my life, and haven't had (3) for more than a few weeks ever since. when i came back and began my last semester of college in the states, i had a really bad case of reverse culture shock and didn't at all like trying to fit back into america when i felt that europe had changed me a lot and i wasn't the same person coming back. i spent a LOT of time wishing i was still in budapest for awhile. i also spent the spring visiting grad schools (i applied to 8 and got into 7), with the criteria that when i visited schools i wanted the math community to remind me of budapest... luckily, rutgers did just that.

1 year ago: january 2005, in the middle of my 2nd year of grad school at rutgers, i passed my first round of qualifying exams, and began my resolution to lose 100 pounds between 2005 and 2006. i also started working with my thesis advisor. after passing my qual, i got hired to run the rutgers/DIMACS research experience for undergraduates in mathematics which provided me with a free summer trip to prague for a conference, after which i revisited budapest for the first time since my semester there. however, after lots and lots of death during my first year of grad school and standing by my best friend through her mom getting really sick and then dying the week before my 2nd year of grad school started (august 2004), i stopped really hanging out with people. i maintained friendships in one-on-one settings, but started avoiding group situations as much as humanly possible.

This year: the social trends i started a year and a half ago haven't changed and i don't know when/if they will. i have managed to lose 65 pounds out of that goal of 100 so far. research with my advisor is going stellarly well, and now i'm studying to pass my 2nd set of qualifying exams. this fall, i got rehired for the same summer job next year, so that means another free trip to prague and budapest. i started teaching this past fall, so it's interesting to be at the front of a classroom instead of in the back quietly taking notes. most weeks i enjoy it. after a little over a year with a vacancy pastor, my NJ church finally has a permanent pastor as of this past week, but the interim has been interesting...

Yesterday: i took my car to the body shop to fix damage that happened while i was home over christmas... then, since eric was my ride home after that, i studied on campus with him and then we had lunch before i was home to finish loading my new ipod.

Today: grocery store shopping, then 2 hours in the math library finding references for things on my oral syllabus that i don't remember yet... since the library i've remembered what a gray code is and what the prufer bijection between sequences and labelled trees is... tonight i'm greatly looking forward to 2 new episodes of scrubs... otherwise dinner and studying,... woohoo :P

Tomorrow: (literal tomorrow): studying the day away.... dinner with eric most likely, but not sure what/where.
(figurative/grand scheme tomorrow): i hope to pass my oral qualifying exam in february, and hope teaching this semester goes as well as last semester... looking forward to budapest and prague this summer and possibly reykjavik too, all funded by math grants. ultimately, i plan to finish my Ph.D. by may 2008, (2007 if i'm really really really lucky), hopefully land a post-doc, and then get a professorship at a university i can feel at home in and live happily ever after in search of mathematical truth. :P

the end.... wasn't that fun?