Hey, my name is Melissa Ponder, and I am a sophomore from Katy, TX, which is about thirty minutes west of Houston. I live in the more rural, stereotypical Texas high school football-crazed part of town, referred to as "Old Katy." The entire town would go to the football games on Friday nights, filling the local stadium with a sea of red. Though there wasn't much to do in Katy except go to the movies or walk around our outlet mall, I really loved growing up there. Living in the bigger city of San Antonio has been quite different from Katy, but so far I have enjoyed the experience.
I love to play sports and to be active. I will basically do anything outside, like going to the park, going fishing, or playing sand volleyball. I also like to rollerblade. (You might see me blading around campus sometime. I know, I'm cool.) I've played piano and violin since elementary school, and I've played tennis since I was five years old. I am also on the varsity tennis team here at Trinity. I love being on the team; we are like one big family and always have tons of fun together. It is, however, a huge time commitment. I am pre-med, trying to decide between a major in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology or Mathematics. I'm also a member of the American Medical Student Association and Reformed University Fellowship on campus. It's difficult to juggle school, tennis, and friends, but I make it work!
My secret fact is that I almost completely severed my big toe with a license plate while washing my mom's suburban! This happened the weekend we got out of school for the summer after seventh grade, so you can imagine my grief. I won't go into gory details, but I had to get thirteen stitches and was on crutches for a couple weeks (but I never cried once!)
I love technology, so I'd like to think that I've always been pretty computer savvy. I took AP Computer Science for a year in high school, so I'm somewhat familiar with programming in Java using JCreator. I don't know how much I can actually remember, though. I would really love to learn some HTML coding this semester. I'm proficient with Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, but Excel is not my friend. It never seems to work for me! So it would be great if I could pick up some better Excel skills in this class.
If you need to contact me, you can send me an e-mail at: mponder@trinity.edu
-Melissa
