about waking slow

Born in Milwaukee, WI, in 1979, I spent my early life cultivating interests in the important things: baseball, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, playing the drums, and pretending I was a wide range of characters.

In 1984, we moved to Vincennes, IN, a small town in Southern Indiana. I went to school at Riley Elementary School, where I played a lot of kickball and did pretty well in school, except for the glaring problem that was my terrible handwriting. While living in Indiana I was assimilated into the realm of fandom that is Indiana University Basketball. In spite of recent embarrassing campagins, I have loved the Hoosiers intensely since their 1987 championship and schedule my life in the winter around their games.

In 1989 we moved to Bethany, WV, a small town of under a thousand people in the northern panhandle of West Virginia, in the Ohio Valley. Bethany is a college town, home to Bethany College, and growing up in a tiny college town exposed me to marvelous, eccentric, and intelligent people. John Irving wrote in A Prayer for Owen Meany, ". . . I suddenly realized what small towns are. They are places where you grow up with the peculiar--you live next to the strange and the unlikely for so long that everything and everyone becomes common place." Growing up in Bethany was an enriching and remarkable experience.

I attended Brooke High School, in Wellsburg, WV, where I graduated in 1997. While at BHS, I realized a deep love for languages and took four years of Latin and two of French. After graduation, I headed off to Bryn Mawr College, a place I love, and graduated in 2001 with a major in Latin and a minor in English. I did some fun extracurricular stuff there, too, like sitting on the Honor Board and serving as a Traditions Mistress. Since then I've lived in both greater Philadelphia, PA and greater Columbus, OH. Now, however, I am a graduate student at Smith College, pursuing a Masters of Arts in Teaching English. When I complete the program, I will be certified to teach secondary school English.

I love reading, writing, film, television, pop culture, and it's those topics that tend to make up the bulk of the content on wakingslow.com. However, I also enjoy traveling, hiking, biking, watching sports, doing geeky stuff like teaching myself basic html and learning new programs. I adore music, and talk about music occasionally on the site. I love stuff I roughly categorize as folkrockpop, like r.e.m., ani difranco, jonatha brooke, sarah harmer, badly drawn boy, but have a total soft spot for a great, melodic pop song. I love making mix cds and cassettes, and tend to catalogue the mixes I make here.

It's really hard to compose a page like this--it's never easy writing about one's self. If there's anything I've left out, don't hesitate to pop me off an e-mail at awake at wakingslow.com.