I Am Bismark

who i am part 1

well, i’m giving up the “anonymous” thing. i did it mostly because i was part of the byu 100 hour board culture. the first posts on this blog were in response to some of the 100 hour board writers (though if you look now you will see i have consolidated other blogs into this one, so there are older posts), so it just seemed natural that i would take on an anonymous persona like the writers. over time i’ve kind of moved away from the whole board thing. it was fun, and a lot of my friends now are from those associations, but i think its time that i take a new step with the blog. really, most of the people reading this already know who i am, but for any of you who don’t, here we go. my name is ryan johnson. i am going to post a series of blogs that i wrote back in january 2006 about myself (but never actually posted anywhere). some things have changed, some things haven’t. i hope you enjoy.

part 1

well, i guess i just feel like writing down a bit about who i am. i know only a small handful of people will ever read this, and most of it you probably know all ready, but here it goes.

my name is ryan allan johnson. i have no idea where the name comes from, but ryan does mean “little king”, so i am pretty proud of that. i was born in baraboo wisconsin and i’m currently 22 years old. i was raised there until the age of 18. we have lived in the same house since i was 1 year old. i finished my secondary education in may of 2002, and in october of 2002, i entered the missionary training center of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints in provo utah to study japanese and prepare to be a missionary in japan. i served there for two years, and returned home to the united states in november of 2004. i started my undergraduate work at brigham young university in januray of 2005, and i so far i have completed two semesters and one term. i have gone from electrical engineering to physics and finally to computer engineering as my major, and i am planning to minor in japanese.

i have never struggled academically. i acheived straight A’s up through high school, with the exception of a B in english my junior year. i was ranked 5th in my class at graduation. of the four AP tests i took, i scored three 5’s and one 4 (my high school didn’t provide too many opportunities for AP tests…). in my early years, at least from the writings i have from the time, it appears i hated math with a passion, but during high school it became one of my favorite subjects. i also greatly enjoyed computer programming classes. after completely all of the available computer classes by my sophomore year, i did one year of independant study, then one year of university level classes at the local university of wisconsin campus. i also enjoyed science, except for biology, which i thought sucked pretty hard. english became my most hated class, as i do not enjoy writing essays (yet here i am typing away…). i had the exact same english teacher for 5 semesters in high school (he taught the advanced courses which i was dumb enough to take), so i started to really dislike the guy, even though in hindsight, he was pretty nice. if it weren’t for english, i could have gotten a higher final ranking. before i came to school, i was awarded the heritage scholarship, which is an 8 semester full-tuition scholarship. i am really grateful that i haven’t had to worry as much about financial stuff because of it. i really have no money saved at all… the classes i have enjoyed the most have been my principles of physics courses, my elementary linear algebra course, and my weight lifting course (even though I got a B in it because of silly grading policies). next semester, i am taking 16 credits. i am taking an advanced java programming, differential equations, a third principles of physics course (electromagnetism, etc), japanese literature, and honors american government and history (the honors version of american heritage for you BYU kids..). i think it should be a lot of fun.

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