Welcome
back to our Precious Gems student spotlight of the semester, this time featuring
Becky Vanarsdall!
Becky
is a senior Math and Economics major on Team JUDGMENT. She is originally from Silver
Spring, Maryland, where she attended Montgomery Blair High School. Becky claims
that she is terrible at coming up with interesting facts about herself, but
I’ll let you be the judge of that. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s BECKY!
Becky
is a tremendous figure in our Gemstone community. Not only is she our current
Fall Food Olympics champion (along with Skyler Golt), she has also been a SL
for GEMS100, GEMS102, GEMS202, and a CL for GEMS Camp! She also loves the
playful and extremely friendly team dynamic of her Gemstone team. Team JUDGMENT’s
research is focused on the influence of construal manipulation on a person’s
willingness to support a violent cause. Construal manipulation puts people in
either an abstract or concrete state of mind, which theoretically affects
whether a person focuses on immediate repercussions or long-term benefit. On her
team, Becky primarily works with data analysis.
Last
spring, Becky interned at the Department of Treasury’s Office of Performance
Budgeting. As she described it, she worked with “a lot of Excel sheets” and budgeting
tasks. More recently, she worked with the Science Education Outreach Program at
the Walter Reed Institute of Army Research, planning curriculum and organizing
activities for dozens of young aspiring scientists. After she graduates, Becky
will be working in Washington DC with the Mathematical Association of America
Competitions Department full-time! How exciting!
Perhaps
one of the most unique things about this Precious Gems is her passion for the sport
of curling! Becky is clearly a talented curler, as evidenced by her consistent
showings at Junior Nationals both in high school and college. She spent much of
her younger years at the curling rink in Laurel, Maryland. It’s not your
typical ice rink: it’s pebbled. And you wear tennis shoes instead of ice
skates, one of which is made to help you slide around. Even while being
afflicted by shingles during a competition, Becky triumphed at Regionals and
qualified for Nationals! And due to being listed on the USA Curling Team
website, she also appears in several news articles as a (mistakenly identified)
DC Olympian. One of her favorite memories as a curler is seeing the Northern
Lights after competing in Alaska.
In
her free time, Becky enjoys running half-marathons with Caroline McCue! She
also watches a lot of TV, including trashy reality shows and shows produced by
Shonda Rhimes: Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get Away with Murder. Becky
LOVES red pandas and can’t really function without coffee (she prefers it
black). Her birthday, March 4th, is the only calendar day that is
also an inspiring command. And at two different times in her life she has
walked into a street sign.
If
you ever see Becky around campus, be sure to say hello! This bubbly,
enthusiastic, energetic, and whimsical Precious Gem will surely sweep
you off your feet put a smile on your face.
-26 November, 2015 - David Nguyen
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