Greetings:

For those interested in reading the condensed version of my profile, please scroll down to Educational Background and Courses Currently Teaching at the end of this page.  Anyone else with time to spare (as in "have nothing better to do"), feel free to read this unabridged version.

I was born in Vietnam but grew up in South Central Orange County, otherwise known as Santa Ana, where I received fourteen years of public education and have obviously lived to tell about it.  After high school I attended UCI to major in English and was probably one O. Chem. class short of a minor in biology. I was misled to believe that any self-respecting Asian at UCI  had to have some bio in his or her studies. I'm happy to have made it out of all the lectures in the Physical Science II building alive and to not have burnt any of my fingers to the bone with acid in the chemistry labs.  

But my years at Irvine were truly marked, thankfully, by the literature and writing courses of some of the most memorable scholars and eccentric characters to have ever lectured on the Little Theater stage in their tweed jackets and suede Macalisters. I owe almost everything I love about literature to the wonderful English professors at Irvine, namely, Professor Homer Obed Brown, for introducing me to Jane Austen and British Romanticism; and Professor Myron Simon, for instilling in me an appreciation for American literature. 

As for my two years of graduate studies at UC Riverside, well, those two years exist in memory as a blurry dream.  And I don't use the term dream lightly to reflect my bad memory, but rather to state quite simply that instead of a masters degree, the university really should have awarded me with a pillow upon my graduation in 1996.  If I mastered anything there after two years, it really was sleep. And Tetris.  (Oh, I'm not supposed to make disparaging remarks about any college campus lest I offend someone.  And anyone who knows me would know that I would never ever offend anyone unwittingly.)  ahem . . .UCR is a fine, fine campus that provides a wonderful learning opportunity-- for those who stay awake. 

The same year that I received my MA from Riverside, I began a long-term substitute teaching position at Bolsa Grande, and I have been here ever since.  I am now in my twenty-second year of teaching, and I wouldn't trade what I do nine months of the school year for anything.  Well, except for maybe a one-way ticket back to Lake Como. Or perhaps a convertible Aston Martin Heritage.  Or possibly a dinner with Daniel Craig.  Scratch that last one.  I would trade anything for a dinner with Daniel Craig.

DISLIKES
1.  The use of the following expressions:

2.  The following questions: 

3.  Good writers who don't take journalism because they're afraid it will affect their  GPA