By Ted Alcorn ’01
“There are two rabbits in the room,” says Google engineer Abi Hunter ’15, who I just prompted to explain her interest in linguistics. “How are you able to know that is true?”
The animals’ wire pens are visible on the Zoom behind her, two massive furry buns dozing within, neither the least interested in being part of a philosophical inquiry into the nature of reality. But that is beside the point to Abi, who ticks off the logical steps required to adjudicate the statement. “It gets very philosophical and heady very, very quickly.”
Abi exudes that combination of silly and serious, and has since she was a precocious kid in Albuquerque’s northeast heights. Abi was an avid reader. “If it was written material, I would pick it up, which occasionally got me into some kinds of trouble.”
Her house was a couple blocks from the Academy, which meant her family was always driving by the campus, even though she attended middle school elsewhere in town. On the cusp of high school, she asked her mom if she could apply. She was offered both admission and financial aid, which she said was crucial for her family.
Upon enrolling, she was immediately smitten. “The actual physical space is just so beautiful,” she said, recalling the cottonwood-lined path and the Foucault pendulums in Brown Hall and the Science Center. And teachers were available in a way she was not accustomed to. She’d wait after class to ask about a reading, and the instructor would offer up a whole free period to discuss.
From watching French films with her grandfather, Abi had become interested in learning the language, and studied with Madame Marnie Bethel and other faculty, then spent a year abroad. “The one word that they would always use to describe me is sérieuse,” she said, but conceded that, during that year, she did “lighten up a little bit.”
The course that may have had the most influence on her was Dr. Alan Vraspir’s Logic and Probability, material rarely taught at the high-school level. “If this is the kind of thing that you enjoy,” she remembered him saying, “you should take linguistics courses and computer science courses when you get to college.” She took the advice to the University of Chicago, where she enrolled next, ultimately getting degrees in both subjects.
Shortly after, she began her career at Google, where she now works on software to help manage its massive data infrastructure. “I’m just surrounding myself with more and more nerds,” she said, rushing to explain she proudly considers herself one, too. “These are my people!” At lunchtime in the company cafeteria, conversation might drift to how they had to adjust the construction of new data centers to make space for all the cables. “And I’m like, ‘I’m fascinated. Tell me more.’”
To shine a light on the transformative power of tuition assistance, Alumni Council member Ted Alcorn ’01 is telling the stories of alumni who were grateful recipients during their Academy years.
