I was born in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, a small island in the Caribbean (near Puerto Rico, 1000+ miles south and east of Florida). The good: wonderfully warm weather and beautiful beaches. In short, the kind of place many people call paradise. The bad: the boredom that goes along with living on a small island, Hurricanes Hugo and Marilyn, and lack of academic opportunities.
I was a nerd. I did well in school, liked math and computers, and was constantly reading and writing. I participated in nerdy hobbies like quiz bowl and MathCounts, devoted myself to lengthy research projects, and racked up a large phone bill after discovering usenet. I spent two summers at Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics, an excellent math summer program, where I was introduced to yellow pigs. Attending HCSSiM was probably one of the best things I ever did.
I had a few really good teachers and classes in high school, but overall I was pretty bored. So when I heard about Simon's Rock, a college which accepts students who have not yet completed high school, I applied. I was accepted, and I dropped out of high school after my sophomore year to begin college in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. I had a wonderful time at Simon's Rock. I took excellent math classes, wrote lots of papers, learned lots, and was genuinely challenged. Most importantly, I found a place where I really fit in and had lots of close friends who were also interested in learning.
My sophmore year I installed Debian GNU/Linux, and began working for the school's IT department. Much of my last two years in college revolved around my nearly-fulltime job. Somehow I also managed to carry a heavy course load and spend time with my excellent housemates.
After my junior year, I spent six months working in an IT department at Stanford University. While there, I spent an excessive amount of time writing my thesis, a mathematical story based very loosely on Alice in Wonderland.
I graduated in May 2000 and took a position working as the sole Systems Administrator at Simon's Rock, which turned out to be an excellent decision because it gave me the freedom to do everything from tech support and wiring and building computers to web design, DBA, and router configuration to making policy decisions and supervising student workers, all along with more traditional sysadmin tasks of course. I also taught a linux class.
In September 2001, I switched to working part-time, and moved to Somerville (just outside of Boston) to pursue a masters in philosophy at Tufts University. For three semesters, I took classes and exams, wrote a ton of papers, worked too much, and spent my free time with my housemates and other nearby friends, or driving across the state for work or to visit my boyfriend.
In November 2002, I moved to Cape Cod. I went back to working full-time (same job, still remotely), audited classes, studied for exams, read a lot, went to the beach when the weather was nicer.
In October 2003, I began working at WHOI, where my primary project there was to implement a network registration system and generally work on things at the intersection of networking and system administration. Meanwhile, I continued studying for philosophy exams. I also juggled, gardened, and visited nearby friends. I passed the last of my philosophy exams in January 2005 and received my M.A. in philosophy in May 2005.
In October 2005 my boyfriend and I moved to the San Francisco area to work at Google. The work itself and the work environment are exceptionally stimulating, and I'm thoroughly enjoying living in California, with its warm weather, year-round farmers' markets, and ample bookstores.
I still pretend to be an academic sometimes. In May 2006 I presented a paper on Virgin Islanders at a conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. In July 2006 I attended Yellow Pig Math Days at Hampshire. In September 2006 I started attending history and philosophy of science talks at Stanford. In January 2009 I started auditing courses at Stanford. In my free time, I can sometimes be found reading books and editing Wikipedia.
(Last updated Aug 2009)