It is amazing to me how much progress can be made while picking daisies, and how much direction can be found in going off all ways at once. I don't know whether I was going to grow up to be a doctor (I suppose that I have, but it's not the way that I had in mind) or a fireman (will an ambulance attendant do?) or a ballerina (oops--thud!). I certainly never intended to become a nerd. On the up side, I never imagined just how much fun being a nerd could be.
I was born on June 27, 1965, two weeks after I was expected. which is pretty close to on time for me. My parents were both medical students at the time, and it is presumably from them that I learned that hospitals are places where you eat dinner. They tell me that I said the word ``bird'' at seven months, and I haven't stopped talking since.
If you overlook the periodic lectures to which I subjected my family, friends, and anyone else who would listen, my teaching career began in 1976, when I assisted in an after-school calligraphy course. I went on to teach Hebrew, biology, flute, more calligraphy, mathematics, first aid and CPR, and finally computer science. In the mean time, I outgrew high school and headed off to Harvard.
After discovering that Harvard would not allow me to design a Special Concentration in Life, I settled on Computer Science as the next best thing. Actually, it was largely as a result of bad timing on my part that I choose the major, but it seems to have worked out all right. Along the way, I joined every extracurricular activity on campus (for at least a week) and spent most of my senior year commuting to New Haven. At the end of four years, I had my degree (which says Computer Science but is mostly in everything but), an engagement ring, and a one-way ticket to Providence, RI.
Brown has been a wonderfully supportive environment for me. I stumbled into my first research project, and wound up with a published paper. Although I had to curtail my extracurricular activities somewhat, I still managed to earn my EMT-I/D, learn to play squash, and bake several K of cookies. After four very full years, it appears that it is once again time to move on.
1990 has been a busy year for me. About the only thing I didn't do was get married, and that's because I'm already married to the most wonderful husband I can imagine. He encouraged, prodded, nurtured, cooked, cheered, consoled, babysat, coached, and generally supported us through the various challenges that this year posed. None of us---me, our daughter, or this thesis---would be here without him. I'd dedicate it all to him if I could; since people don't come with dedications, he'll have to settle for the thesis.
Whatever it was that I set out to do, you can be sure that I did not intend to take the most direct route. There have always been so many interesting things to stop and see, and I usually find myself involved with six or eight of them at once. Somehow, though, the wandering path turned out to be a shortcut, and while I imagined that I was simply having a good time, it seems that I've come a fair distance along the road.
From Lynn Andrea Stein, Resolving Ambiguity in Nonmonotonic Reasoning, Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Computer Science, Brown University, August 1990.
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