In late 2002, I was 17 years old. In the previous year, I had had a crush on a Russian girl - in my small town, she was something of a marvel, as one of the few to speak a different language. And what better way to attempt to get her to notice me than to secretly study her language? Well, it turns out that, if all you have is a Russian Grammar, without a teacher, linguistic training, or exposure to the language, learning Russian is extremely difficult. High School crushes come and pass, but my love of language never did; I started exploring other languages, briefly looking at Hmoob Njua, intrigued by the practical orthography and tone system.

Getting Here

But the study of particular languages never fully satisfied me, and I was left wanting more; I very nearly dropped language altogether for Quantum Physics. But all the while, I kept on studying; German and Spanish reminded me of English, and I began to think that, rather than studying languages, I could study Language, with all its complexity. In the end, I have to credit Google for leading me to the LINGUIST List and Eastern Michigan University. I immediately applied for an Undergraduate Degree in Linguistics, with a minor in Anthropology (though I nearly had enough credits to make it a major), and the summer before my Senior year, I joined the crew of LINGUIST.

Around here I'm involved with the following teams and projects:

Internal Wiki - Team Leader

Tracking and organizing policy documentation for all topic areas and projects.

Tech Team - Team Leader

Maintaining our computer inventory and ensuring all machines are up to date with the latest software.

E-MELD Maintenance Team - Team Leader

Charged with the upkeep of E-MELD and the School of Best Practices, now that the grant has ended.

Language and Location: a Map Annotation Project

Organizing documentation, entering data, working with ESRI software and training the rest of the team.

For more, please see my personal website!