Polly S. Brown

Comments:

It would truly be great to attend our 40 year reunion. I am much older and wiser than I was back then and am quite happy about that. I like being 57 years old a lot.

Now I'm 61 and it's even better, folks. I'm back in touch with some of you and delighted at that fact. However, there are still some of you that I have missed and would very much like to contact. I live in Portland, Oregon with my significant other and our two adorable dogs, Sadie and Noah. I work as a part-time, self-employed counselor/peer support specialist and love my work. Thinking about moving back to the Bay Area. I miss the sun, although Portland is perfect in every other way.

School Story:

After Paly, I was a hippie for a couple of years. Then four years of Mills College, two years programming in Chicago, then 7 years of grad school in Denver, CO, studying Cognitive Psychology, in which I obtained my Ph.D. in 1985, with Distinction. This led me to a 19-year career studying human-computer interaction (usability) and working with software engineers. First there was a two-year post-doc at IBM Watson Research Center in New York, then IBM in San Jose for four years. I was fired. Terminated. Contracted in Silicon Valley off and on for the next five years and had a very bad drinking and drugging problem. The drinking and drugging led me to homelessness, unemployability, psych units, and living in a shelter in Palo Alto churches, Urban Ministries. My new jobs took me all over the country, from Chicago to the Bay Area to Denver to New York and New Jersey and back to Colorado Springs, CO. I finally landed in Portland, OR in 2004 and made a home for myself. Today, I live with my dear friend Christopher and my buddy dog Sparky, who is the love of my life. I am very happy and have no plans to move anytime soon. I enjoy life thoroughly, mainly because of my church involvement (UCC) and two volunteer positions, one as a website development and design person for the Multnomah County Dept. of Community Justice. The other volunteer position involves being the Grants Director for an incipient nonprofit based in San Mateo County. I work on that long distance and it's a lot of fun.

Elementary Schools Attended:

Van Auken

Junior High School

Jordan

Colleges Attended

Mills College, Oakland, CA, 94613, BA in psychology and computer science.

Univ. of Denver, Denver, CO, 80208, MA and PhD in cognitive psychology.