Sara loves her hometown of rural Walkill, NY for its “large areas of still-undeveloped woodlands,” but she has wanted to live in Virginia since age 7, when her family first visited the beautiful commonwealth.

Sara finds Charlottesville very similar to Walkill in that its surrounding woodlands contain “hilly, winding back roads dotted with irregularly spaced houses.” In Sara's opinion, the weather and landscape of Charlottesville are perfect, and everything is close enough to mass transit to eliminate a need for a car, although she is considering buying into the scooter trend. The Rivanna River seems smaller to Sara than the Hudson, although she recalls the northern part of the Hudson as a comparable size to the Rivanna.

Sara has had at least one friend for most of the years in between that first visit to Virginia and now: Oreo, her “small black and white tuxedo cat.” Oreo was named during the “incredibly creative naming period” Sara went through at the ripe age of 10. Oreo has been Sara's one and only pet for 13 years and Sara describes her as a “sweetheart” unless she's unfamiliar with you, or you happen to be another cat. If that's the case, Oreo will either glare you down, or run and hide.

Sara's absolute favorite place in the world is St. John's Cathedral in New York city. Sara describes her experience there, on a rare empty day as quietly cool in a “vast Gothic cavern, columns rising up into pointed arches and vanishing in the shadows of the ceiling, dimly lit by candle-shaped lamps.” Although Sara hasn't yet seen a true Gothic cathedral, she hopes to tour Europe some day so she'll have that opportunity. In the meantime, she might get her Goth fix by re-reading her favorite book: Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte.

While in Troy, NY, Sara critiqued her classes by separating them into three categories: bad, boring, and fun. She somehow managed to put both Intro to Electronics and her Medieval and Renaissance History classes into the "fun" category because, despite their obvious differences, she found the professors of both to be amusing, interesting, “and borderline eccentric”. Sara discovered putting together a working electronic circuit, such as one that can tell time, to be a great experience and she has always been interested in the Middle Ages.

Sara found out about Interpretive through the Deighans, the family she says has been “slowly taking over the employee base here at Interpretive.” Her first impression of Interpretive as an office was that it's “small, friendly, and professional without being stuffy.”

As a Customer Support Specialist in the Marketing Simulations Group, Sara assists faculty and students with any information they need about Interpretive's marketing simulations. PharmaSim is her favorite simulation so far because it strikes a good balance by being complex without being utterly overwhelming in options.

Although Sara admits to staring blankly at simulations for several minutes “wondering what on earth I'm supposed to be doing” when she first starts a brand new (to her) simulation, she recognizes the definite advantages to learning business principles first-hand. Sara compares business to programming because “you can't just read about how a data structure type works, you have to write some practice programs with it to really understand how to use it.” For those of us that feel we wouldn't understand programming no matter how many practices we wrote, she also compares it to drawing: “you can't just read about how different pencil hardness is useful for different feels and line qualities; you have to try out the different pencils.” Similarly, according to Sara, students need to implement business strategies themselves to truly understand their effects.

When away from Interpretive, Sara reads “voraciously,” is writing a novel, and coding an MMORPG. She also crochets, draws, and would love to find a reasonably priced espresso machine so she can take home her growing espresso skills from “Hotcakes,” where she loved working because of the free meals she enjoyed while on duty. Sara describes making espresso as a combination of cooking and bartending, with slightly less ingredients. Although this all may seem like a bit much, Sara admits to having somewhat divided motivation, which causes her to “end up just chatting online.”

Another passion of Sara's seems to be fried potatoes! Sara excitedly exclaims this as her favorite food, and no one can mess it up for her. On a sweeter note, Sara loves cheesecake, which she didn't realize was actually called “New York style” until she moved out of New York and saw it on a menu. She hasn't met the culinary challenge of cheesecake yet, but Sara does like to bake delicious brownies and chocolate chip cookies. She also once made chocolate mint cookies, although that was a self-described accident.