So you want to know a little bit more about me...

Great! Just as I said on my homepage, I am a Carnegie Mellon (CMU) Senior studying Decision Science.

As fate would have it, college applications and acceptance was an "easy" decision. I was accepted into my reach school, CMU, along with Purdue University and Indiana University. (Take note that I am from Indiana). Because of my niche financial situation, going to college out of state ended up costing less than in-state! So, I ended up at CMU. However, I only managed to get accepted into CMU's Mellon College of Science. Because of this, achieving an education in Engineering or Computer Science (what I thought I wanted to learn) fell far out of my reach. A year and a half later, I wound up stressed, depressed, and compressed. Calculus was never my strong suit, Calculus II earning me an R (Essentially an F) twice in a row. It might have been due in part to me having the same professor twice, only ever learning the subject in one specific way, but I digress.

After a tad bit of soul searching, I decided I wanted to change majors in a major (heh) way. Speaking with several academic advisors from different schools, I landed at the office of the academic advisor of the Social and Decision Sciences. Needing to drop a class to give more of my time to my other courses, I went below the 36 unit / 12 credit minimum and was placed on acadmic probation. I was on thin ice. One slip and I have to take an "academic break" for a semester. Not desirable. I geared myself up, my schedule taking on a whole new form. I was learning an entirely new subject, after all. I ended up studying Decision Science. It uses a mix of Psychology and Statistics, in a way. Psychology is interesting on its own. Finding out what makes things tick is fun - people included. Statistics, on the other hand, I was a bit apprehensive about. I understood the basics of stats, but never learned it formally. But thanks to science, I didn't quite need to! Computers to the rescue! With the power of programming, computers do all the heavy lifting, leaving researchers time and energy to dig valuable information out of raw data.

I had plenty of time on my hands (most of my science prerequisites carried over), so I decided to use the extra units I had remaining to try and achieve a minor. Still interested in programming, I discovered CMU's HCI Institute. While my QPA (CMU's version of GPA) was too low to at the time to get accepted into the program, I was still able to get a seat in several course sections. These classes have been wonderful, easily some of my favorite throughout my undergrad, each teaching me much about design and prototying skills! Here I am now, a to-be college graduate, figuring out what to do with the rest of my life! I think I turned out well enough.