My love of language arrived like a smack upside the head, but in a good way. I had never really had much interest in languages, until one day, I made the life-altering decision to learn Japanese (to better appreciate anime I was watching, a hardcore fanboy move). The experience made me feel that learning to speak a new language was almost like growing a super power. Fast-forward a few years, and I was putting my new skill to use translating technical documents.Concurrently, I've been in a long-term relationship with another kind of language: the computer kind. I cut my teeth with QuickBASIC and Pascal, captivated by the seemingly limitless ways in which programming allows you to turn ideas into reality. A bachelor's degree in Computer Science expanded my toolkit with languages such as C++ and Java, and helped build me into a more effective software developer.Grad school finally gave me the opportunity to combine my passions. As a participant in the UNC Linguistics MA program, I gained broad and deep insight into the complexities of human language, while applying my technical skills as a research assistant. I then capped off my experience by completing the Graduate Certificate in Computational Linguistics, giving me an understanding of various ways software can be leveraged to extract information from linguistic data.With my new master's degree in hand, I'm currently looking for opportunities to both put my skills to good use and continue to learn about emerging natural language processing technologies. I'm particularly handy with Python and web development, and can fire up a C compiler when necessary. In my downtime, you might find me on Duolingo, or catching up on comic book back-issues.