Introduction

Hi.

I am a 22-year old male living in Columbus, Ohio. My life began in 1988, in Nashville, Tennesse, as the third child of a first generation Japanese immigrant and a woman from Wisconsin. I was preceded by two girls, my older sisters. From Tennessee, to California, to Japan, to California again, to Michigan, and finally to Ohio, I have lived many places in my life so far. I have many interests, but my most prominent pursuits are cooking, riding bicycles, and riding skateboards.

The most recent event of note in my life has been my graduation from OSU. I graduated in May of 2010 with a B.A. in English but without any planned careers or even a memory of why I chose the major in the first place. Luckily, I was able to get a job at OSU, which allows me to pursue a new degree at very little cost.

Being able to get a fresh start at college is extremely exciting for me. It will be refreshing to study a topic that I am actually very interested in and excited to learn about. Also, as I was still doing quite a bit of growing up during my first four years at college, I hope to begin school again as a (somewhat) more responsible person.

The process of creation, especially purposeful and useful creation, has always enthused me. One of my fondest high school memories (as far as classroom memories go) involves a Physics project. It was the popular egg drop challenge, but with a twist: our egg containers could only be made out of toothpicks and glue. We were supposed to work in groups of two, but since we had an odd number of students, I gladly volunteered to work alone. (I have never been much a fan of group work.) While I was normally not the type to commit my full efforts to school assignments, I stayed after school multiple times to finish my wooden egg vehicle. The extra work payed off; my design was the only one to protect its fragile cargo and I remember feeling quite proud about my solo success.

This class is the first class I have taken since my graduation, and I hope it is the beginning of a path that will end with a degree in Industrial Design. I hope to be able to earn living creating things that are useful, things that have purpose, and things that are (hopefully) pretty to look at as well.