Hi, my name’s Maayan.
1997 - I was born in Rockville, Maryland. I didn’t have a name and then my mom had a dream and in it I was called Maayan, the Hebrew word for a desert spring.
2002 - I watched the little mermaid and decided I wanted to be King Triton for my birthday. My grandmother made me a trident and and crown and that made me very happy.
2011 - I snuck into the last slot of freshman ceramics, only because someone else had dropped out. This was the place where I learned to take things out of my own head and put them into the world. I am forever grateful to that person.
2015 (spring) - I graduated from high school. We went out to Indian food afterwards. Everything around that time was a haze of joy. Getting into Carnegie Mellon was one of the happiest moments of my life.
2015 (fall) - I saw code for the first time in a lecture for 15-104. The professor put a p5 sketch on the board and asked us what we thought it was. He said it was code.
2019 - I turned down multiple big tech offers and graduated college with many majors and no job. I actually did not graduate. I had one more semester left but they let me walk with my friends.
2021 - I moved to New York to work on Avenue. I consider this to be the start of my adult life. Adulthood feels a lot like childhood only you have far more agency and far less structure. For me, my height has stayed about the same.