Maria Balyakin '23 has a wide range of academic interests, including mathematics, computer science, Latin, and linguistics. In her free time she enjoys swimming, fencing, playing renaissance music on the recorder, folding modular origami, keeping fish, and learning constructed languages. Masha has been an avid reader since early childhood and never parts with her Kindle, and writing has been special to her as a way to process and organize ideas. She finds non-fiction writing especially useful as an analytical yet creative way to express her thoughts. She is grateful to the Whipple Fellowship for the opportunity to explore in depth a topic of great personal interest to her, and to meet writers with a variety of interests and approaches to writing.