Kate

	Full Name: Kate A.
	Age: Sixteen
	Country: United States
	Responsibilities: Content writing, Spanish translation, CGI, basic graphics, general planning
	New Material: Impressions of Geneva!

More About Me

My name is Kate , I am sixteen years old, and I live in North Dighton, Massachusetts, USA. I will be a junior at Dighton-Rehoboth Regional High School during the 00-01 school year. An experienced web designer, I have participated in two previous ThinkQuest contests with Genetics: Gateway to the Future and CosmoNet. I also design and maintain my high school's website.

I have always enjoyed science, especially biology, and evolution as a subject has recently become a major interest of mine. Ever since I read Richard Dawkins' classic The Selfish Gene a few years ago, the concepts and mechanisms of evolution have fascinated me; I have been especially intrigued by the idea of replicators and its implications for philosophy. This site was my first opportunity to apply my knowledge of and interest in evolution to a major long-term project, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Currently, my career interests include fields related to this topic, such as molecular and evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, and neuroscience.

I also enjoyed the collaborative aspect of this project. Both my teammates are intelligent, well-informed, highly capable people who contributed a vast amount to the successful completion of this site. Despite the fact that they and I are in opposite hemispheres, we still communicated successfully and collaborated to produce a well-integrated final project. In the process, I developed a better understanding of Russian culture and daily life. I would also like to thank my coach, Joseph Flaherty, for all his assistance and support.

Thank you for taking the time to visit Replicators: Evolutionary Powerhouses, and I hope you return often.

Impressions of Geneva

My trip to Geneva was the first time I have been outside the United States of America, and I found it an extremely exciting experience! ThinkQuest has worked hard to make the competition a genuinely international event, and I firmly believe that they achieved an unqualified success. Everyone who attended the event had a unique perspective to offer and a unique experience to share. In the space of a few moments, I could interact with my roommate from Germany, finalists hailing from Minnesota, Alaska, Singapore, or India, and then my teammates from Russia. So many different perspectives came together under one roof that it is virtually impossible to catalog them all, and I am proud to have been part of such an amazingly eye-opening event.

Regarding my own teammates, I was immensely happy that I could finally meet them all in person. Communication over the Internet is truly a revolution, but humans evolved in an environment of face-to-face interaction, and that preference is still active in my mind. Despite linguistic gaps, we were able to move into a realm of rich and rewarding personal interaction. I would never before have thought it possible to cram so many new discoveries (or so much chocolate!) into so little time.

One of the discoveries that made the deepest impression on me related to the use of languages. Although I have always been interested in linguistics, I - like many American students - never really looked beyond English as a method of communication. Yes, I take Spanish classes in school, but I am far from proficient in the use of the language. Interacting with such a wide variety of people who use so many different languages to communicate has inspired in me an intense desire to learn not only how to communicate in a variety of languages, but also how to scientifically compare their features and origins.

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