Last week, I graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University with a B.S.E. in Computer Science and a minor in Linguistics.

At the CS graduation ceremony, I was honored to receive several awards. My senior thesis, “A Corpus-based Analysis of Two-termed Coordination,” won the Outstanding Senior Thesis Prize, and I won the Outstanding Student Teaching Award for my work as a TA for the CS department. Most of all, I was honored to receive the Phillip Goldman ’86 Senior Prize in Computer Science, the top prize and highest academic honor awarded to a student in the Computer Science department. I was also inducted into the Tau Beta Pi Society (the Engineering Honor Society) and the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

When I started my first year at Princeton, I was a scared 17-year-old from Los Angeles who had traveled across the country alone for the very first time. I knew nothing about computer science or programming, and I was easily intimidated by my peers, whose knowledge was difficult to match. But despite the challenge that came with my lack of experience, I never stopped working toward my goals and pushing myself to learn more and exceed my limits.

I have to give special thanks to Princeton’s Computer Science Department for the challenging but rewarding four years and the Program in Linguistics for helping me discover my love for language. And of course, I am so thankful for all the friends at Princeton I’ve made along the way. Although I couldn’t celebrate with everyone in person, I’ll definitely be visiting campus in the future!