Dear Ms. Murphy's class,
Hello, or as the Swedes would say, hej hej! I'm Nicole, a 22-year-old American living in Umeå, Sweden right now. Growing up in Lisle, Illinois, I was always a curious kid who loved two things: exploring the outdoors and figuring out how things work—especially computers!
As a fifth grader, I spent most of my time swimming in Lake Michigan, getting lost in giant corn mazes and reading tons of books (I loved the Percy Jackson series). But excited me most was understanding how technology works. I would look at a computer and wonder, "What counts as a machine? Does it actually think?"
Did you know that some computers are so smart they can play chess better than world champions? Others can be used to generate works of art in the style of Vincent Van Gogh or to predict weather patterns far in advance.
When I turned 18, I made a big decision—I packed my bags and moved to California to study computer science at Stanford University. I traded corn fields for palm trees, and it was like entering a whole new world! Stanford wasn't just a university with a campus; it was like a playground for people who love technology and want to do amazing things with it.
