About Me
I am Karina Wilbur.
I am a student, musician, and aspiring mathematician. I am passionate about all things math and music. Even though I'm not always good at it, much of what I like about math is the satisfaction of pushing past and mastering a challenging topic.
When I'm not working on math homework or doodling with a graphing calculator in my spare time (seriously), you can find me listening to or making music. I play three instruments: flute, guitar, and piano, and I am the first flute in my school band, which has consistently been my favorite elective for the last seven years.
One thing a lot of people don't know about me is that I'm a major hiking and backpacking buff. I have been on countless hikes and backpacks in the Colorado Rockies, and being out in nature, seeing the mountain range go on for miles in every direction from the peak of a 13er, and being in the company of good people makes me really happy. One of my biggest dreams is to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, a 2,650-mile, five-month backpack from Mexico to Canada.
I plan to go into the California Conservation Corps after high school, where I can continue to spend time in nature while getting the chance to give back to it as well.
This is a project I did in ninth grade. I was asked to use a graphing calculator to create a simple image, using a given list of required and optional functions to compose it. I took this assignment and ran away with it, spending hours figuring out how to shape the functions I only had a vague concept of at the beginning into exactly what I wanted. I learned so much about the mechanics of those functions—what they did, exactly how to manipulate the constants and coefficients into looking a certain way, how to "fill in" some functions—and through my experience learned to love it. I have since worked on several bigger projects of the same sort.