personal information

As a French-Swiss-Italian girl, I have a strong will and love people who can keep up with me. I can be kind and generous, but I am also very demanding and sometimes a little bossy (been a teacher too long). I think that learning is the most important thing we have to do during our lives and the more I learn, the more I realize how much there's still to learn! I believe that money and TV are the two evils of this world. I also believe that whatever happens to me is for the best and that I'm in good hands, that having children today is selfish, that a little smile goes a long way, and that my students can teach me as much as I can teach them.

After getting a double BA (English and Design), a MA in TESOL at Brigham Young University, Utah (yes, I spent a little more than 6 years in Utah and yes, I miss it!), and a PhD at Purdue University in Indiana (in Linguistics), I am now an Assistant Professor in Applied Linguistics at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. My goals are to improve the lives of multilingual speakers at our university, to create new courses, to help make the Writing Center a wonderful student resource, to provide good leadership to the LNG instructors, to conduct fun and useful research projects, to work with interesting people, and to publish as much as I need to.

Traveling is my favorite thing to do, as well as learning about different cultures. I also like to shoot guns just to relax (just targets, I would never kill an animal; in fact, I even try not to eat them either!), and to listen to music, and read in French, English, and Spanish, about different religions, languages, people, history, culture, literature, psychology, management, music, education, and just whatever. Finally, I must admit that I love to teach because I love to learn, and I have been teaching (music, French, writing, and ESL) forever.

Other simple things that make my life beautiful: my family, the ocean, cats, international foods, helping people, spending a quiet evening with my friends, Beethoven, the mountains, European architecture, speaking Spanish, good books, French cheese, the jungle in Ecuador, the sunset outside my window, Japanese food (mmm... sushi!), swimming, San Francisco, a rainy day after the summer heat, going to the gym to gain a few pounds of muscles, Swiss chocolate, going to cricket matches, playing UNO, fighting with computer programs and languages to improve my web pages, discussing with my students, shopping for books (but I hate shopping for clothes!) going for long walks, writing in my journal, and... millions of other things!