About

My name is Millie—I’m from the Silicon Valley (San Jose, CA) but spend the majority of my time in Los Angeles and have spent my last two summers studying in Paris. I am studying Global Studies with a minor in Geography at UCLA, and I’m currently finishing up my senior thesis on cyberwar and teaching a seminar on the same topic. I was a corporate partnerships/sales intern with GOOD Inc., a media outlet and magazine in 2009-10 and I’ve been involved with the Burkle Center for International Relations at UCLA as the Multimedia Editor since 2008. I’ve also worked at The Daily Bruin, UCLA’s student newspaper, as an opinion and news columnist, multimedia contributor and Opinion Editor (2009-10). Beginning July 2011, I will be starting my fellowship at the Atlantic Media Company in Washington, DC.

You can also find me: @millie and meliorare.tumblr.com

My Proust Questionnaire.
What is your current state of mind? Restless, but overstimulated. Feeling like a tortured creative soul.

Favorite spot in the world: Playground around the corner from L’As du Falafel in the Marais in Paris

Ambitions: To keep writing, learn the guitar & travel to meet people and listen to their stories

You can never have too many: Books, shoes and gigabytes.

What is your greatest extravagance? Not practicing constraint.

What is the quality you most like in a man? Curiosity, determination, humor and looks good in a suit.

What is the quality you most like in a woman? Driven, snarky and understanding.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? To read faster & require less sleep.

What is your most treasured possession? My mind.

What is your most marked characteristic? I’d say both friendly and farouche, depends.

What do you most value in your friends? Ability to bring out the best in me.

What is it that you most dislike? Disregard (for others, ideas, knowledge, reason, etc.)

What is your greatest fear? Not contributing to the world; not being a good mother.

One day I hope to: Practice patience and focus, live in another country.

Quotable:

It seems that if you trust your gut without ever feeding your gut any facts or news or contrary opinions, if you keep your gut on a steady diet of grandiosity, ignorance, sycophants, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, those snap decisions can be ruinous. —Maureen Dowd

We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose. —Charles Baudelaire

Traveling through the world produces a marvelous clarity in the judgment of men. We are all of us confined and enclosed within ourselves, and see no farther than the end of our nose. This great world is a mirror where we must see ourselves in order to know ourselves. —Michel de Montaigne