Hello. This is my first blog so I just want to introduce myself before post my first "real" blog entry. I'm new to blogging, but a veteran of CAG. I found this website through Google while searching for "cheap games" or something similar. It's a great community and I'm happy to be a member of this site. Now a little about me.

Currently I'm a senior at the University of Arizona. I plan to graduate with a B.A. in Classics and a minor in Sociology in 2009. Yeah, I have no clue what I'll do with that degree either. Any Classics majors/graduates have any advice? If so, thanks in advance. My next move will probably be graduate school and possibly obtaining my doctorate after that, but I haven't decided yet since those are expensive. Now for a side-story/intro to how I was introduced to games. Skip to the very end of the blog to avoid a lot of text.

[Intro to Gaming sidestory] Originally I was majoring in Computer Engineering since my dad worked as a Quality Assurance Engineer and passed on his love for computers onto me. He's the one who started my interest in gaming back when I was a little girl. He brought home our family's first console, the NES. My sisters and I played all the classics: Super Mario Bros. 1-3, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Punchout, Duck Hunt, etc. Next he bought the "new hotness" (my words, not his): the Sega Genesis along with Sonic the Hedgehog 2. My friend and neighbor had a SNES so I got to play a little of that too. It was the best of both worlds. Eventually he bought a N64 along with a couple of games: Kobe Bryant's Courtside (I think that's the name) because I loved basketball (again, because my dad and I were close and used to watch college and pro sports together). That was around the time I was in 8th grade. My dad died in a car accident that summer so that ended my basketball career and interests in sports because I no longer had anyone to bond with over those things or anyone to come to my games. During that summer I started randomly getting issues of Electronic Gaming Magazine (EGM) and it turns out that my dad had subscribed me before he passed away so that kept my love for games going while my sports passion slowly died.

After being emotionally wrecked for the next two years of high school I met one of my current best friends Ailene. She doesn't know this, but I remember coming out of my depression after meeting her. I think it's because we had a lot of common interests and in some ways I felt connected to her/my dad through her love of Star Wars. You see, I got the guts to talk to her (I'm really shy and don't usually start conversations) because I saw her reading a Star Wars book during class one day. Like I said, it reminded me of my dad and I decided to talk to her about it. That led to us being friends. I later found out that she's a geek and gamer like me that has a unique sense of humor so that naturally led to a long lasting friendship that still lasts today. Oh yeah and she's also currently a Computer Engineering major. Imagine that. [/Intro to Gaming sidestory]

[Switching Majors story] Anyways, I realized Computer Engineering dealed with the hardware side of things and not software so I switched to Computer Science after a year. That lasted for about a year and a half when my grades started dropping my 3rd semester in the major and I began to get bored of all the extra classes that were thrown into my major that weren't relevant. All I wanted to do was program. Soon I started to get cold feet and decided that I didn't want to be stuck on a computer all day with my already horrible eyesight. My major fear in life (besides complete dependency and failure) is going blind. My nana (grandmother) is blind and I don't think I could live life fully seeing how my greatest passions are visual (movies and games and reading to an extent). Yeah, that's sort of a cop-out, but a legitimate fear. Also, if I want to program, then I only want to program games and I started to feel that the major had too much bullshit related to it in terms of taking unnecessary, non-related courses. Therefore I began to lose interest in school (besides my programming courses) and my grades dropped dramatically. Basically, if I ever decide to continue with programming, then it'll be through a technical or specialty school that focuses on game programming. Yes, it's dumb to limit myself to one field when I could've had a general degree with many more opportunities, but I wasn't interested in that and my sole basis for the degree was games. My ideal career path would be to make games or movies or at least write about them as a journalist, but most likely that's not going to happen so I decided to switch my major to my then-current minor of Classics since I love the content and am endlessly interested in ancient Greek and Roman history. In reality it was hard sticking to one major because I just want to learn a little bit of everything, but it would probably be bad to know a little about a lot than to be a master of one. [/Switching Majors story]

Now you know a little about me.

I love games, movies, computers, technology, books, music, etc.

I have an unhealthy, endless thirst for knowledge and want to learn and experience as much in life as possible.

I am quite open-minded and flexible in my ways and views and just love meeting new people and learning about them.