I had no idea what to entitle my introductory post on the hallowed web domain that is admissions.tufts.edu, so I figured I'd throw in something possibly confusing, but endearing to my nerd kin on the web.
For those of you who don't know who I am, hello! My name is Sabrina McMillin. What's yours? (Introduce yourselves in the comments if you want. Or don't, it's okay. I don't run your life.)
Growing up, I was considered a 'smart cookie' to various members of my family. My mother's side mainly consists of my German immigrant grandparents and their three daughters born in New York City. My dad (rather, step-dad) hails from a background of western European (a little Irish, a little Dutch, a little German, and so on) folk whose ancestors arrived in the United States back when women still wore petticoats and Alexander Hamilton's sex scandal (isn't Wikipedia glorious?) was the latest of not-so-political affairs. Before my parents (mom and father) were divorced when I was five, I also had an upbringing in the Asian Indian community of Rochester, New York. (That's my hometown, by the way.)
On a completely unrelated note, I love parentheses. Probably too much, though.
So what's the HAPA (Half Asian) woman who's been raised in an all-Caucasian family since 1998 supposed to do with her life? The answer is: spend the rest of her childhood and adolescence in Catholic school, plan to attend the illustrious Occidental College in Los Angeles, get homesick and chicken out, actually attend a small liberal arts college in Rochester, and transfer into Tufts as a political science major and mass communications and media studies minor. Oh, and blog, I guess.
Gratuitous picture of myself:
Now that you have the rundown of my family background and educational history, I should tell you that blogging is a passion of mine, and this isn't my first foray into the world of the Internet. Many years after frequenting Nick.com and religiously reading the blog posts of the fictitious Penelope Taynt (AMANDA'S NUMBER ONE FAN, PLEASE) from The Amanda Show on AmandaPlease.com, I have come to the conclusion that the Force of the Web is strong with this one. I think it might be a step-up from AmandaPlease.com, but tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, The New York Times, The Economist, and many other sites of varying levels of seriousness tickle my fancy.
Also, here's an actual picture of me with Cardboard Cutout Wil Wheaton as Real Wil Wheaton was playing Settlers of Catan a few feet away and didn't want to be disturbed:
Not only do I blog for Tufts Admissions, I write for the Tufts Daily and work as one of their assistant layout editors. For my Gender and Popular Media class (did I mention that I'm an insatiable feminist?), I'm also running a blog about how I interact with media of every kind. It's a required component of my course grade, but I'm having fun with it.
I love foreign languages. I took Spanish for six years (though to be fair, three of those years were just part of my basic middle school program, so I have three real years of experience en Español). I finished up my Spanish education with the Regents exam (a special New York State thing) and moved on to French, just for fun. After two years of French, I traveled with a group of classmates and teachers to France, where we stayed for two weeks with host families in Rennes and in a hotel in Paris. It was the adventure of a lifetime, and I'd like to do more traveling, particularly in western Europe. Because I placed into French 3 at Tufts, I might return to it soon, but right now I'm focusing on German, the language of half my heritage. Oh, and obviously I speak English. One of my life goals is to become a polyglot (a person who knows many languages). Maybe I'll even throw some computer programming language in there when I have the time. Java, anyone?
I feel as though this intro post has become very long-winded, so I should probably stop here and save some of my blogging magic for later. As a transfer student, one of my main goals is to help transfer applicants grapple with the strenuous process that is reapplying to college. For accepted transfers, I might talk a little more about how it feels to join the Tufts community as a transfer and how to assimilate comfortably while maintaining one's sense of sass and individuality, which is easy enough to do here, as I take it. But even if you are not a transfer student or applicant, I urge you to carry on, because my greatest goal is to make Transfer Files readable and entertaining for anyone who happens upon it.