General interests

I love to learn, so I spend a lot of my waking hours learning new things. In the past, I've been particularly interested in math, philosophy, logic, computing and programming, music, film, literature, and the physical sciences. These days I'm thinking more and more about the really complex, modern, society-level problems which face ordinary people. Climate change, homelessness, and education reform are a few such issues. Everyone seems to have an opinion on these issues, but there seems to be a serious knowledge gap between academic experts, policy-makers, and citizens.

I would love to help reduce this gap and support real change that helps people in my communities, so I've been really interested in learning more in these areas. As such, I've started reading Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 by James Patterson (US history) and watching video lectures on money, banking, and macroeconomics. I also hope to pursue studies in public policy and organizational leadership.

Math interests

I've loved math since the third grade. Until my third year of college, this was because I was good at it and enjoyed the puzzle-solving process. Once I started taking proof-writing courses, I loved math for the same reason, but also because I genuinely found the subject matter interesting.

Nowadays, I'm mostly working in applied math, particularly numerical analysis and the study of numerically approximating a solution to a partial differential equation. If you want to know more about the work I do in this field, check out my math portfolio on the Portfolio & CV page.

Philosophy interests

I got into philosophy in undergrad. The college had professors from both the analytic and continental side of the discipline, but I ended up falling pretty stably into the analytic side.

Within that side, my interests are quite widespread: epistemology and metaphysics are my most explored areas, but I also love doing logic and I've really enjoyed my cursory readings in the philosophy of education. Recently, the journal Teaching Philosophy has accepted a paper I co-authored with my old logic professor on how to teach the truth table for the material conditional to introductory logic students. If you want to know more about my work in this field, check out my philosophy portfolio on the Portfolio & CV page.

I received my high school diploma in 2019 from Berea Community High School in Berea, Kentucky. There, I took as many Honors and AP courses as I could, and I really began to develop interests in a variety of subjects, including math, English, economics, and physics. In the end, though, math was my favorite subject. I have no doubt that this was in large part because of Mrs. Linda Williams, who was always incredibly encouraging and engaging. To this day, she still comes to mind as one of the best teachers I've had, and she is the main reason I am studying math now.

Largely due to the financial aid I was provided, I ended up going to college at Kalamazoo College (K) in Kalamazoo, Michigan. In my first few terms there, I was planning on majoring in math and physics while taking German courses to fulfill the foreign language requirement. I ended up loving the German courses and professors, so I decided to major in German, too. Eventually, I lost interest in physics and replaced it with philosophy—and I haven't looked back since!

At K, I had many instructors who played pivotol roles in my life. In the German department, I owe a great deal to Dr. Kathryn Sederberg, Dr. Michael Powers, and Dr. Petra Watzke for pushing everyone to improve while maintaining a welcoming atmosphere. Along similar lines, Dr. Eric Barth and Dr. Stephen Oloo were integral in the development of my math education. Then, in philosophy, I owe more than 3/4 of my knowledge and success to Dr. Lars Enden, who is now a dear friend of mine.

Math

Philosophy