| What is your most memorable childhood experience? | Traveling to the bottom of the Grand Canyon on the back of a mule with my family when I was 12. I remember being terrified for roughly the entire trip down, but the experience was incredible. |
| What immediate family member do you closely identify with and why? | My older sister. Because we are close to the same age, we have faced the same experiences at roughly the same times. We were in high school together and are now going through college together, so we talk a lot about what is going on and can really talk with each other on equal levels. |
| What character traits do you admire in an individual? | I think that honesty is one of the most important characteristics a person can have. Patience is the other big one for me. Things can take time, and being able to deal with that well is important. |
| What is the funniest thing ever to happen to you? | When I was a kid, my family used to go to my grandparents' house every year for the Fourth of July. They lived in a small town, so no one really cared if we shot off fireworks and rockets in the streets. One year when I was maybe 8 or 9, we had bought a whole box of rockets to shoot off at night. My dad told me to go ahead and pick one out of the box to shoot off. I lit the rocket and ran away as fast as I could, but I tripped over the box and tipped it over. I also didn't set the rocket up well, and it shot straight into the box with maybe a dozen other rockets in it. Needless to say, every rocket in the box got lit, and rockets started flying everywhere. My whole family, maybe 20 or so of us total, collectively hit the ground scrambling and screaming as our whole collection shot in every direction at once. Luckily, no one was hit (although we managed to hit a streetlight). I was so scared of lighting fireworks after that that I sat the rest of the year out. |
| If time and money were not an issue, where would you travel and why? | I would really enjoy traveling to Australia. The incredible variety of life there is a major draw for me. I would love to explore the outback, and snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef would be unreal. |
| When and if you ever have children, what would you like to pass on to them? | The importance of family life. I love my family very much, and they have been a great source of strength for me in my life. I would like to instill the sense that family is an important part of life in any children I may have in the future. |
