When I was in Thailand on a humanitarian service trip, I was approached rather out of the blue and asked if I had any artistic skill. To this I replied “a little” and was then given the behemothian task of painting a 20 foot mural to welcome tourists and visitors to the orphanage we were helping. This took some quick soul searching, a lot of sketches, experimentation with paint (I was given the three primary colors only, along with black and white), research, and three days of intensive, nonstop labor to help create something of lasting value to a place that needed funds and for a people I had grown to love deeply.This exemplifies my approach to life. I love diving in, getting my hands dirty, expressing myself in new and creative outlets, and seeing how much I can make with the limited sources I have on hand. I do not consider constraints and limitations in resources (or any other field) to be oppressive; in fact I tend to thrive on them as unique challenges to see how far I can stretch the boundaries to reach its greatest potential.I love to tinker. I love to research and learn, and to help people in a genuine way. One of my favorite clandestine* hobbies is to invent recipes from novels based off simple, often one-worded descriptions. One of the most challenging (and rewarding) of these recipes was to invent a bread for a post-apocalyptic world based on New Zealand culture.After extensive research I came upon a bread known as Rowena Paroa, which uses a natural leavening from fermenting potatoes. My interest was definitely piqued. Then came the work. Weeks of testing and honing batch after batch of bubbling potato water and refining the chemistry coupled with ancient bread-making techniques finally yielded a bread to which no recipe had existed online in the United States. This kind of dedication showed itself equally well in my Smithsonian internship where I wrote a walking tour booklets for one of the most famous stamps in history.
Listed skills include Research, Collaborative Problem Solving, Libraries, Social Media, and 7 others.