In May 1991, I earned my Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics and computer science from Macalester College in Minnesota. Since then, I have been working at Cray Research as a software engineer and systems analyst and am now a graduate student at the University of Minnesota.

Unlike many students, I studied mathematics very willingly throughout high school. I enjoyed working on the problems and did well in class. My grandma always told me, “If you can do well in math, you can do anything.” I didn't really believe it, of course. I studied mathematics because I was good at it. For the same reason, I decided to study mathematics as well as computer science when I entered Macalester College in 1987. My favorite subject in mathematics is geometry, and I did my senior year honors paper on finite geometry. That was something I thought I would never be able to make use of after I finished college, but it later came in handy when I became a graduate student in computer science.

I was hired as a software intern at Cray Research in the summer of 1990 to work on a scheduling program for the Cray Supercomputers. The manager who hired me later told me that the reason he picked me was because I had a very strong background in mathematics.