This information isn't really very interesting at all, but if you want, you can keep reading... It has some links to places that I've been.

I grew up in San Francisco Chinatown. I don't speak with a Chinese accent now so many people find it hard to believe that English is my second language. It really is though. My parents didn't speak English so there was no one to teach me the language. I went to a school in San Francisco where the classes were taught entirely in Chinese. I find that pretty amazing now. After a while, we moved to Alameda where learning English was a little more imminent than it was in Chinatown. At Donald D. Lum Elementary School, everyone spoke English. Fortunately for me, little kids have a small vocabulary so I wasn't too far behind! Well, that transition wasn't too bad. Even junior high was ok. After that, I went to Encinal High School. That was pretty uneventful too.

I guess I lead a fairly boring life. School pretty much consumes just about every aspect of it. I've been in school since I was 5 and have yet to leave. I think I like school... :)

I was an undergraduate at U.C. Berkeley. I pretty much consider myself a jack of all trades and master of none. I like to dabble in everything but have a short attention span. To keep myself occupied as an undergrad, I majored in Applied Mathematics with an applied field of Computer Science. I also majored in Political Science. I spent almost all my time in the computer basement with all my programming buddies. They are all making a ton of money working in Silicon Valley now while I still can't get out of the habit of being in school. Hmmm.... I think that makes them all smarter... but... I have more degrees... :-} I do still dabble a lot with computers. I maintain my own Linux workstation, cho.pol.uiuc.edu, and have been having a lot of fun doing it. Unfortunately, maintaining your own workstation doesn't pay as well as being a sys admin for a Silicon Valley company. Hmmm... but you get to be in school. :-}

After I graduated from college, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer so I headed off to law school at Cornell. My year in Ithaca was incredible. I met my husband, Lawrence Cho, that year. That alone made it a pretty great year! Despite having a blast in law school, I soon discovered that I didn't wanted to be a lawyer at all, so I headed back to graduate school. The school theme continues...

Grad school was great. In addition to doing what everyone else was doing in grad school, I continued to feed on the needs of my short attention span. I learned how to swim and got into doing triathlons. I also did my first, and only, two marathons. Marathons are ok. Everyone should run at least one, but after that... Triathlons, on the other hand, are great! I still get obsessed with doing triathlon races on a semi-regular basis. Perhaps this is a part of my jack-of-all-trades nature. I'm not really good at any one sport but I'm decent at all three sports. Or maybe it is that short attention span thing again. I can't concentrate on one sport. Anyways...

After many years, I graduated from the Political Science and Statistics departments at U.C. Berkeley. When I was in grad school, I used to be a regular fixture at the Institute of Governmental Studies. My advisor, Bruce Cain, is still there. I haven't been there in a long time though. I spent the last couple years of my graduate career moving around for one reason or another. I spent some time hanging out at Stanford University. My other advisor, Doug Rivers, is there. I also spent some time at Northwestern. In 1997, I arrived at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I have a joint appointment in the Departments of Political Science and Statistics. In 2001, I was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. I was on the faculty at Northwestern University during the 2005--2006 academic year, but am now back at Illinois. Come visit me here, and I will do my best to find you some good corn...!