My name is Kristian Stipe and I am from whitefish Montana. I was born there. I grew up there. It is one of my favorite places in the world. I love to ski, so growing up in whitefish was a big plus. With Big Mountain less than 15 minutes out my front door, skiing was always a possibility. I have been skiing since I was roughly 18 months old.  I am pretty active outdoors. I grew up without TV. When I say without TV, I mean we only had PBS. Since I grew up on PBS I watched a lot of Nature and Nova, lots of science shows. My parents are both computer geeks. I have been surrounded by computers my whole life.  I am at college for a couple reasons. Mainly I am interested in higher knowledge. I want to know more. I enjoy learning new things, mostly science.  I am at college for a chemistry degree. I really want to do research for something. I am not interested in working for the oil companies, which is basically my only other option other than research if I have a chemistry degree. I am also considering getting a minor of sorts in education. I wouldn’t mind teaching chemistry either.  I live with my girlfriend off campus. I have been going out with her for close to two years now. I love her very much.  I know a decent amount about skiing and chemistry, the reason they are my two major interests. I don’t do much writing; I am a pretty terrible writer, unless it truly intrigues me. The only worthwhile things I ever written was an essay about procrastination, and a research paper about stem cell research.  The reason those were half way decent was because I was actually interested in them. I’m not sure writing can do a whole lot for me, with the career path I am choosing. There will be scientific papers I suppose, so I guess it is slightly important for me to learn to articulate myself well.  I am very unmotivated when it comes to writing. I usually just don’t care.  I just don’t. It is hard to focus on one thing at a time for me. I don’t particularly enjoy writing. So it makes my writings even worse. When I try to write about something I’m not interested in I just hit a wall and start to give up. My ideal place to write would probably be in a library, where I hopefully won’t get too distracted. In my own space at home I usually end up getting distracted unless there is a major deadline. I never really get stuff done until the last minute