Connections

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No man is an island. I live in connection with institutions and other people, and I would like to provide a list of some of them. My list of friends is necessarily incomplete because most of them don't have webpages. (If you know me and am wondering why I don't have a link to your homepage, please contact me.)

Organizations

My connections with these organizations vary. Some I am formally connected with, some informally; with some the connection is present and with some it is past. (And no, I don't speak for them, unless they say so.) There's a disproportionately high list of groups doing things with the mind; my guess as to why is that other communities I'm involved with aren't as likely to have web pages.

Calvin College
I completed my bachelor's in pure mathematics at Calvin. In many ways it was like Wheaton: a beautiful campus, challenging classes available, and faculty who care about students. I enjoyed moving about by touch in dark underground tunnels there, and improvising on the chapel organ. It was there that my most prized writings began: Religion Within the Bounds of Amusement and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. The Christian Reformed Church, which runs Calvin, puts a heavy emphasis on thinking Christianly, and it shows. (They also have a goofy tendency to worship the human mind, but we won't go into that.)

Cambridge University
I earned my second master's at Cambridge, England, a beautiful place where I took the pictures on my home page and the pictures I used for Impressions of Cambridge, a Myst-like virtual tour.

Church of the Great Shepherd
Church of the Great Shepherd has felt about as much of a home as any church has. A lot of things are nice—there's more than one culture present, and the people are interesting—but the one thing that draws me most about it is that there is a community of love, worship, and the presence of the Spirit. There are a lot of little things I could point to and say "I like this, I like that," but the one overriding interest is that God's love is present. Leaving Church of the Great Shepherd, alongside leaving the people I know at Wheaton, is one of few things I was not looking forward to in my future studies at Cambridge. Church of the Great Shepherd is a place of fond memories for me.

Eolas Technologies
One respected book on software development said that, if you find a technically competent boss, you should do everything in your power to keep him. Mike Doyle, CEO and founder of Eolas, is all that and more. He's a brilliant inventor who designed Eolas the way an inventor would design it, and as a person he's surprised me by going the extra mile. I'd love to see him meet Mike Welge, who hired me into the National Center for Supercomputing Applications; both Eolas and NCSA combine deep thought, cool discovery, and technologies taken right out of science fiction books.

Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy
IMSA has very much its own feel, and creates a niche both eccentric and intriguing. I would trace my being taught to think and explore as a scholar to IMSA—I consider it the beginning of my higher education, and I graduated ready to take the highest level of coursework in mathematics, computer science, physics, philosophy, and French. I missed my graduation because I was away at a math contest, and IMSA was kind enough to devote a whole minute of silence to me before other graduates walked up to receive their diplomas.

Mega Foundation
The Mega Foundation exists to serve some of the needs of very bright individuals. (What special needs could there be? That would take a lot of explaining.) Among other things, the Mega Foundation runs the Ultranet (which has been important to me). It provides an environment for spellbinding conversation, and gave the warmest response of any online community when I shared that I'd been accepted to a good graduate school.

Newman Foundation
The Newman Foundation at the University of Illinois was founded to provide a home away from home for Catholic students. It appears to be, with the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, one of two loci of vibrant Christian faith where "Christianity" does not mean "Christianity, revised and edited," or the "Church of Jesus, Buddha, and Socrates," or what some scholars term "Gnosticism." The Foundation runs Newman Hall, where I stayed, and Newman Foundation Koinonia, where a retreat serves as the entrance to a very warm community. The hall has a few priests etc. on staff whose job description is 90% to care about you, whether or not you're Catholic.

Pooh's Corner
Pooh's Corner is a group of mostly Wheaton students (an administrator and a couple of alumni thrown in) who meet at 9:58 Tuesday evenings to read children's books aloud. It's a colorful tradition, at times quite animated, and the silliness and fellowship are delightful. At the beginning of this year, when we were making signs to invite people, one student suggested the slogan, "Pooh's Corner. Come for the women; stay for the food!" He was naturally met by a hail of crayons, but that sign ended up getting as much applause as any.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Many Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy alumni arrive there, where I earned a master's in applied mathematics with a computational science and engineering option. I was also the first student to graduate with the department's new thesis option. My thesis described a new kind of mathematical structure between a topology and a metric space. It turns out to be easy to use those spaces to derive new types of numbers. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, like many other universities, is a little universe of its own. Other Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy alumni complained that the environment was boring, but I think they missed one of the most valuable lessons from attending a boarding school in the middle of a cornfield (no cars allowed). The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, a library of byzantine complexity, and all sorts of student organizations. There's plenty of reason to find that fascinating.

Université de Sorbonne
My time at the Sorbonne is part of why I am so delighted to be accepted to Cambridge. I spent a semester studying abroad, and when I left France, my heart stayed. There are so many things about France that feel like home: wine, beautiful architecture, and saying hi to friends with a kiss on the cheek are among the more concretely enumerable reasons why. They are important, but there's something of the mindset that's harder to describe and which I prize highly. England and France are not the same country, but I believe that that spark will also be seen in Cambridge.

Wheaton College
I went to Wheaton College after high school, and have kept ties since then. When I realized that some community requirements were set in a way I couldn't keep in good conscience, I left; the experience was painful, but Wheaton remains a place of sharp thinkers and considerable kindness. Wheaton remains close to my heart.

People

Josh Wibberley
Josh grew up in Turkey, writes, thinks, and makes web pages. He's also good at entering other people's worlds.

Robin Munn
Robin is my best friend. He grew up in France, double majored in computer science and philosophy, and wants to provide technical support for missionaries. He wants very much to be a good listener in his interactions with other people.