I
am a graduate (B.A., 2010) of Rutgers
University in New
Brunswick, New Jersey, having completed the most
intellectually satisfying major/minor combination there is:
philosophy, my first academic love, and the classics, something I
happened upon along the way, but which continues to remind me (or
us, rather) of our brief but torrid affair by surfacing on its own
in many of my writings without my conscious intent. Since August of
2010, I have been a Ph.D. student in the Department
of Philosophy at the University
of Notre Dame.
Qua graduate student of philosophy, I am primarily
interested in epistemology, particularly as it relates to the social
dimensions of knowing (e.g., disagreement and testimony), and
related issues in ethics and the philosophy of language and mind
(such as the ethics of belief and the conditions, status, and extent
of moral knowledge). I wrote my undergraduate senior thesis on
strategies for dissipating various forms of skepticism, in
particular Cartesian skepticism, under the direction of Professor Peter
Klein, who served as my adviser and mentor throughout. To him
I am greatly indebted not just for my success in actually completing
the thesis, but, as a cherry on top, being awarded highest honors by
the third-ranked philosophy department in the world for it! (I am
totally bragging here.)
A little about my background. I spent most of my childhood years in
Singapore (though this wasn't uninterrupted--I also spent 1 - 1.5
year stints in Hong Kong and Taiwan during this time), until right
before I turned 11, when my mother took me and my sisters back to
the States--to Tyler, Texas, specifically, where my older sister and
I were born. You might be curious as to why my parents were such
itinerant folk. Well, my father is a businessman, and, being
bilingual, the companies he worked for naturally put his skills to
use outside the continent. My older sister graduated from Texas
A&M University in College Station in 2008 with an economics
degree, and is now employed as a banker for Chase. My younger
sister, who graduated in 2011 from high school as her class's
salutatorian, is currently a freshman at The University of Texas at
Austin. In matters consanguineous, my mother is Taiwanese with
Chinese ancestry, whereas my father is more mix-blooded, giving me
an additional hint of Dutch (1/16ths, to be exact) and Japanese
(quantity unknown).
I like most college sports. Beyond the obvious allegiances there, I
am emotionally invested in and have loyalties to the Philadelphia
Eagles. This is partially because about half of my family is based
there. But really, I just love watching Michael Vick scramble and
toss the football like it's a peanut. I enjoy most racquet sports,
and actively participate in tennis.
(Join the Notre Dame Student
Tennis listserv!) My favorite tennis player is Rafael Nadal. I
am an avid reader and collector of books as well. One of my most
prized possessions is a first edition print of The Great Gatsby
by Scribner's Sons. I'm sure it's worth a bit more than what I paid
for it.