Academic Career

I started college back in the Fall of 1999. My intial goal was to go to Appalachian just for 2 years so that I could get a pre-med background and then switch out into one of the pharmacy programs offered at either Furman University or UNC Chapel Hill. This idea didn't quite come out as planned and I found myself at App for a third year. During this year I took Japanese language courses on a whim and became highly interested in the subject. I took all the Japanese language courses offerd by App at the time and then hit a dead end of sorts. I took a year off to try and decide what I wanted to do with my life. I gave a Chemistry major a second try during my first semester back but hated it too much and transfered into IDS because my sister was already in the department and told me about the Asian Studies concentration but more importantly the opportunity to study abroad and learn more Japanese. My year abroad is definitely the time in which I learned the most, about myself, Japan, and the Japanese language among other things. Now I am back at App taking the IDS required core classes so I can graduate. I've filled in the time remaining to be a full time student with Asian based courses, despite wanting to focus mainly on Japan App offers very few Japan specific courses and I have had to make due. As far as courses I've taken goes I have 28 hours invested in Japanese, several more in Japan specific as well as other Asian religions, Japanese and Chinese history, Chinese, Asian geography. In addition to these I also have a background heavy in the sciences and math because of my initial attempts toward the medical field, which as an end result turned into my minor which is Chemistry.