My name is Aubrey Durand and I’m from San Francisco, California. I was born in Providence, Rhode Island but my family moved to Bainbridge Island, Washington off the coast of Seattle when I was 2 years old.

this is a baby picture of mine:

The summer before I started high school, my family moved again to San Francisco for my dad’s work. I’ve played soccer my whole life and also play the piano and the guitar. My sister is a sophomore at Brown University, and my dogs name is Becky. I have no previous experience with astronomy aside from informal star gazing, but have taken biology, chemistry, and 2 years of physics.

At this point, I think I will most likely major in Neuroscience. I became really interested in the human brain years ago when I read a few books by a famous neurologist named Oliver Sacks. The two books were Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, and The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. Both of the books are a collection of odd neurological cases.

I hope to learn a lot more about astronomy during this class because I have never studied it but find it very interesting. I’m most excited to learn about black holes because they aren’t completely understood. Here is an interesting article I came across recently describing the debate between physicists regarding black holes and calling into question Einstein’s theory of relativity: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/science/space/a-black-hole-mystery-wrapped-in-a-firewall-paradox.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0n