Carolyn Insley Introduction

Hi, my name is Carolyn Insley. I'm a California native (where it's so warm and pleasant right now that we're actually having a drought).  I'm a sophomore planning to major in English––$200,000 English degree, here I come. My favorite dessert of all time is a warm chewy brownie, vanilla ice cream, and hot fudge.

My intellectual experience happened last year in a special education classroom when I was actually trying to teach someone else. I was working on counting to 20 with a boy from the class, and he was doing just fine until he skipped over 16––multiple times. When I asked why he was doing that (because sometimes these kids do just decide they hate certain words or numbers sporadically) he looked confused. He actually had no idea what 16 was, and it occurred to me that I actually had no way of explaining it to him. It just existed because it had to, and because everyone else said it did. Or did it? Coincidentally, just a week later my SFII professor gave us a fairly existential lecture that was centered around the idea of numbers, and how they can both exist and not exist simultaneously––fascinating.