Hey everyone,
I’m Ian, a transplanted Midwesterner who headed out west for a Stanford education and the occasional In-N-Out burger. Having grown up in Cleveland, I tend to associate palm trees with exotic vacation spots, so sometimes when I’m walking around campus on a nice day I forget I go to school here (at least until exam time comes around). Stanford has been really good to me for these three years, although I’m sure I’d have told you the same thing if I had ended up at a different school. There are so many academic, social, and extracurricular options that it’s easy to fashion a good existence for yourself most anywhere you go. Anyway, no more preachy college advice for the time being.
Music takes up a lot of my time, which is fine with me. I play saxophone seriously and drums tolerably. My latest thing is fooling around with Garageband and making beats. Until recently (we just split up) I was in an unruly 12-piece band called TGIFunk that played Stanford parties (yes, there are parties here) and San Francisco bars. When I’m not on stage, I’m in the audience. The Bay Area has a great music scene, so my friends and I are often up in San Francisco or down in Santa Cruz to catch all kinds of shows- jazz, rap, rock, electronica, funk, and assorted hippie music. Other than that, I write for a satirical newspaper, work in a neuroscience lab, play a bit of frisbee, nothing too fancy.
I’m studying Human Biology with a focus in neuroscience, but thanks to my ADD approach to picking classes I’ve gotten exposed to a broad range of subjects. In the fall, I got interested in intellectual property and law, so I’ve been exploring those areas as well. My favorite class right now is a seminar called Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders. Each week they bring someone in to talk about innovation, and they’ve brought some serious heavyweights: the COO of Facebook, the CEO of Microsoft, and the guy who invented the Palm Pilot.
This summer I’m off to L.A. to work for Warner Brothers’ Digital Distribution group and hopefully learn to surf. I hope you all have excellent summers and I look forward to hearing from you.
Ian
IAN: Ian is now in his final year at Stanford University, where he is majoring in Human Biology with a concentration in Neuroscience and Human Behavior. Originally from Cleveland, Ian writes for a satirical newspaper and plays saxophone and occasionally the drums.