Hello class, my name is Eustina. Who do I live with? I am so, so lucky every night I go home to the love of my life, Frosty the Snow Cat. He is the only thing guaranteed to make me happy. There have been times where I have been crying/sad and he just knows I need a head butt and some company. I did not particularly like cats before Frosty — I adopted him from the Berkeley Humane Shelter four years ago during a free adoption weekend. The dog I saw on the website had already been adopted and I figured since it was free I had to get something. If you are feeling stressed or lacking for cuteness you can ask me and I will be happy to show you Frosty’s latest photos.
When I was a pre-teen I was very interested in technology. I built my very first table-based HTML webpage when I was ~13 and was involved in early “girl” web culture and having an online, pre-social media presence. As an undergrad I studied art, graphic design, and web development. When I initially entered the workforce I wanted to be a developer and even considered further study of computer science or engineering.
However I quickly realized it didn’t matter if I had technical ability or passion. There is a cultural formula for the kind of person who is a developer/engineer and it is not and will never be me. When I was living in the bay area and particularly discouraged I would complain that a white, male twenty-something who had literally spent his entire life in a cave without so much as a light switch would be hired as a developer so long as he had a passing resemblance to Mark Zuckerberg: stackoverflow would fill in the gaps. I do know women who have been successful in such environments but it requires a kind of temperament, stamina, and esteem I don’t possess.
For a while I felt pigeonholed doing marketing oriented web design, but I was able to pick up interesting freelance projects that were more UX or product focused. I think I was drawn to UX because it was creative but also felt technical. Through UX I became interested in learning how users interact with products and learning better fundamentals for user research was a big motivation for applying to grad school. I am also very interested in the concept of “design” thinking and how design can be applied to organizational and not necessarily visual concepts.
In this seminar in particular I would like to improve my communication skills; how to define rationale and goals both for myself and to share those ideas with others.
