Hi all! My name is JJ. My family is from Iran but I was born in Australia and we all moved to the US when I was one (so no Australian accent unfortunately). I am a first year MALAS (Masters in Liberal Arts and Sciences) student and I graduated from SDSU last semester as an interdisciplinary studies major with a minor in philosophy. I love learning about how everything is related with each other and strongly believe nothing is produced in complete isolation.

I love social theory and hope to become a sociology professor one day. Dr. Choi in the sociology department has been a major influence in the way I think. I am interested in (but know embarrassingly little) about Postmodernism. I am considering writing my thesis regarding the social construction of reality and what it means to have “invisible” (non-linguistically defined) experiences.

I currently work as an A/V technician for the Student Union. I love the job because, simply said, it’s a lot of fun. Being behind the scenes and working with fancy equipment on major events as a student feels like a huge privilege. I also work as a Gen S instructor for first year students living on campus. This is my first semester so it is a very new job to me but so far I’m really enjoying it!

On the side, I love to cook. My favorite thing to cook is steak but I love making intricate salads as well. One of my favorite parts of cooking is looking at what’s in the fridge and figuring out how to make something that tastes great–kind of like an episode of master chef.

I am really looking forward to this class because I love learning about context. I know very little about books as a concept and am excited to learn more about it!