This is Eric’s public story.
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Eric Hwang’s Story
16 places in 28 entries • 16 family & friends
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Taipei City, Taiwan
Duke University - West Campus, Durham, NC, USA
What was your college major and why did you choose it?
22 months ago
1997 • Duke University - West Campus, Durham, NC, USA I double majored in mathematics and computer science. I was originally going to major in biology, but after two years decided that it wasn't for me, and I wasn't for it, and figured the only way I could still graduate in four years was to major in math, which I had been thinking about minoring in. I then decided to tack on a computer science major because there aren't a whole lot of jobs for mathematicians, outside of academia, finance, or actuarial work. And now I'm a graphic designer, not using any of the skills from any of my majors. So yea... that all worked out.
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Duke University - West Campus, Durham, NC, USA
Where did you go to college and why did you choose that school?
22 months ago
August 1995
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Duke University - West Campus, Durham, NC, USA
I attended Duke University in Durham, NC. I went there largely because of its excellent biology department (that worked out really well...), but the good weather and beautiful campus didn't hurt. I also didn't become a rabid Duke basketball fan until I got to campus (hey I'm from Chicago... MJ, UNC, you know), but quickly became a Duke blue-bleeding, face-painting convert.
It was the last school I heard back from, and I had actually forgotten that I'd applied at all. In fact, on my application, I put chemical engineering, which doesn't even exist there. After I heard back from all of my other schools, I was resigned to going to either Columbia or Cornell, neither of which I was terribly excited about. Then my father came home from work and told me that there was a priority mail envelope addressed to me. I had no idea who would have sent me something priority mail, and all of the other schools I'd applied to had sent me school branded packages (acceptance) or letters (rejection). Then I opened it, saw a big Duke logo embossed on a navy blue folder cover, and that was it, decision made.
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Chelsea Piers, 23rd St, New York, NY 10011, USA
What do you look forward to doing on the 4th of July?
22 months ago
July 4, 2011 • Chelsea Piers, 23rd St, New York, NY 10011, USA Photographing the fireworks, especially the NYC ones, which are just massive and magnificent.
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125 E 11th St, New York, NY 10003, USA
Do you have a photo from a recent concert you went to?
22 months ago
April 29, 2011 • 125 E 11th St, New York, NY 10003, USA The Joy Formidable at Webster Hall. Excellent show with a ton of energy, also was the first concert I brought my DSLR and telephoto lens to. I shot the concert from the balcony on the side of the stage for a bit of a different perspective than the usual in front/below the artist shots.
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Duke University - West Campus, Durham, NC, USA
How did you get into your line of work?
22 months ago
1997 • Duke University - West Campus, Durham, NC, USA I was taking a software development class, where each project was treated like a commercial software release. Each group had to come up with a name for the software and company, and create a web site and user manual for it. The rest of the team always looked at that as a chore, but it was my favorite part. I started delving into well-designed web sites and books, and got more into graphic design in general, started taking classes, and the rest is history.
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Hazleton, PA, USA
What makes you feel euphoric?
22 months ago
May 7, 2005 • Hazleton, PA, USA Skydiving is probably the most exhilarating thing I've ever done. My buddy Jeff asked me if I wanted to go several years back, so we went to this place in Pennsylvania. He'd already gone once before, I wasn't really sure what I was getting myself into. The truth of how dangerous it was really hit home when we had to watch a video of a lawyer explaining how our families couldn't sue them, and then signing our lives away. The scariest part wasn't even jumping out of the plane, but rather the rickety plane that took us up. Also, they train you on how to jump out of the plane, but when we got to the open door, the pilot basically tipped the plane over and out we went — there really wasn't any choice in the matter. In the end, it was probably the greatest high I've ever experienced. Interesting factoid, the guy in the video who jumped out first holds the world record for number of jumps out of an airplane. He's a retired army paratrooper, who just goes up and jumps all day long.
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Duke University - West Campus, Durham, NC, USA
What was your favorite college course?
22 months ago
1998
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Duke University - West Campus, Durham, NC, USA
Graphic Design: The Printed Page, hands down. Especially when you consider what I do now, and that my first two years were mostly biology and chemistry courses for the biology major that never happened, while the last two years were mostly mathematics and computer science classes for my math/comp sci double major.
Not only was I taking it at the same time as three computer science classes and a math class, it really gave me the confidence to pursue graphic design as an actual career and my professor's advice and teaching had a large impact my design style, which I still draw from today.
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Highlands Elementary School, 525 S Brainard St, Naperville, IL 60540-6600, USA
Is there a photo of you as a Boy Scout, Girl Scout, or Brownie?
23 months ago
1986 • Highlands Elementary School, 525 S Brainard St, Naperville, IL 60540-6600, USA This photo of me in my Cub Scout uniform was taken in fourth grade, though I don't remember it at all. Clearly I was far too engrossed in the book I was reading to notice a photographer in the room.
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Naperville, IL, USA
Naperville, IL, USA
What do you miss most from childhood?
23 months ago
Naperville, IL, USA Super cliche, but summer vacation. Where I grew up in Naperville, IL, all of my friends lived close by, so we would ride our bikes over to each others' houses, and play, or go exploring, into the woods, to the stream to catch tadpoles, to unfinished houses to run around in the maze-like foundations. The river walk was a great park that followed the DuPage River that flows through downtown Naperville, and I always remember going to Oberweis ice cream shop in the summer to get some respite from the heat and humidity. The 4th of July fireworks every summer were also great, though I was always more excited about setting off smoke bombs and roman candles everywhere. Hmmmm, between all of that and my frog jump experiences, I feel like my childhood gives off a very Mark Twain vibe.
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Naperville, IL, USA
Describe your childhood home.
23 months ago
Naperville, IL, USA
I was born in a split-level house in Naperville, but when I was three years old, we moved across town to a house my parents had built for them, in a brand new subdivision. Ours was the first house built, and I still remember going with my father and brother to all of the construction sites in the summer evenings, and going into the foundations and partially finished houses and exploring.
My parents worked with the architect to customize the house, and had certain personal touches added. It had yellow siding, because our family name is the color yellow in Chinese, and there are two hand prints in the cement of the walkway to the front door: my brother's left hand, who is left handed, and my right hand. There was also this "great big" rock in the front yard that we used to climb on. I put "great big" in quotes because I looked up the house on Google street view, and it looked like it was about 2 feet tall.
My father would later finish the basement, with some help, but he did a lot of it himself. And then we moved to Arizona, only to move back to a house 4 houses away a year later.
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Scottsdale, AZ, USA
Holmdel, NJ, USA
IAC Bldg, 555 W 18th St, New York, NY 10011-2822, USA
Great Adventure, 1 Six Flags Blvd, Jackson, NJ 08527-5369, USA
Describe your first job and how you landed it.
23 months ago
1995
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Great Adventure, 1 Six Flags Blvd, Jackson, NJ 08527-5369, USA
My first job that I had to pay taxes on was working in food service at Six Flags Great Adventure between high school and college. The previous summers I'd done some internships and programs to make my college applications look more impressive, but now that was all done. A couple of my high school friends had gotten jobs there, and a few more of us wanted to get some extra money before college so went to see what was available. I ended up working at a footlong hot dog place between the Great American Scream Machine and Flightline rides. I had to wear an olive green Air Force-looking jumpsuit, and serve hot dogs and icees all day, and it seemed like every day was 98 degrees out.
The best part about it was the hours: 2PM to 10PM. I think those are just about my ideal hours, being a night owl. I'd get off my shift, and then go and hang out for a while, then go to sleep and wake up around noon, and then just get ready to go to work. No painful dragging myself out of bed every morning. I almost never took advantage of the free access to the park, since I didn't want to spend any more time there than I had to.
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Manhattan, NY 10003, USA
Naperville, IL, USA
Naperville, IL, USA
Do you have any good frog jumping stories? Attach a video.
28 months ago
May 26, 1984
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Naperville, IL, USA
Funny you should ask. At my elementary school, every year, the first grade classes competed in a frog jump. Each class would send a representative with a frog in a shoe box, and the competitors would sit at the center of a circle. The object of the frog jump is to get your frog to be the first frog to jump to the outside of the circle.
Each class had people with different responsibilities: a trainer, frog shoebox-house decorators, etc. The glamour position, of course, was the frog racer. Now two years ago, my brother won the entire frog jump when he was in first grade. He got his picture in the newspaper and everything, it was a pretty big deal in the Hwang household. So come my turn, I was naturally tapped to race the frog for my class, being the sibling of a former frog jump champion. The pressure was on.
Each heat had three frogs competing against each other, and the winner would move on to the next round. My heat had my frog, Thunderbolt, another frog whose name I don't recall, and a frog named Lucky that only had three legs. I have always remembered that frog's name because of the irony. So my odds were pretty good to move on to the next round, I had to beat a handicapped frog and one other.
Well, as things turned out, I did not win my heat. I did manage to beat Lucky, the three-legged frog, but otherwise, I came up short. I did not go on to local fame, or get my picture in the paper. I don't think I thought much of it at the time, but looking back now, I can see it as the first realization I had that stepping out of my brother's considerable shadow would be a difficult task, and one that I wouldn't really feel confident about until we moved to New Jersey without him, and I went to a school that he hadn't passed through in a whirlwind in front of me.
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New York, NY, USA
What's your favorite photo of the city you live in?
28 months ago
October 11, 2010 • New York, NY, USA I take so many photos in New York that it's hard to say what my favorite is, but this one stands out as a particularly fortuitous photo. Even when I try to set up and take lightning photos, the lightning usually seems to know what I'm doing and strike way off to the side, or right between frames. This time, though, I got it right smack in the middle of the frame, taken from my bedroom window.
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Chelsea Piers, New York, NY 10011, USA
What's your best photo from a party?
28 months ago
July 4, 2010 • Chelsea Piers, New York, NY 10011, USA July 4, 2010. A great afternoon of sailing on the Hudson was capped off by parking the boat at Chelsea Piers and having a party, and watching the fireworks over the river.
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Jersey City, NJ, USA
Describe an unforeseen event that impacted your career.
28 months ago
September 11, 2001
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Jersey City, NJ, USA
Working in New York, I'm sure this is a very common answer, but 9/11 impacted my job at the time greatly, and also affeceted my career. At the time, I was working for Sapient, one of the "little five" internet consulting firms that had been super hot during the dot-com boom. We were smart, confident, and arrogant, and weren't shy to let it be known. We spent too much money on designer garbage cans and offices that were total wastes of space (but looked cool). Then the bubble started to burst. Sapient managed to stay relatively okay by shifting the majority of its New York business to the financial sector. And then 9/11 happened.
Our office at the time was on the Jersey City waterfront, directly across from the World Trade Center. My co-workers who were in the office early saw, and felt, the impact of the airplanes, from our office. Our building was used as atriage center, and the view out of the windows of our office was the wreckage of the Twin Towers. For a few weeks in January, I had to work on-site at Deutschebank, which was just a few blocks from ground zero. I had to take a ferry over from Jersey City, and could smell the asbestos in the air everywhere in the financial district every day.
9/11 accelerated the demise of the dot-com boom, and especially the Wall Street projects that Sapient had been relying on, and three months later, 90 percent of my team, including myself, were laid off. I went from there to my least favorite job, a programming position I was in no way qualified for, where I lasted 5 months, before going to a company whose business model was tricking people into installing pop-up ad software. Any job at that time was a good job. It took a while to get my career back on track, and though I can look back on it with humor now, those were not the most jovial of times.
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555 W 18th St, New York, NY 10011, USA
What do you like most about your job?
29 months ago
555 W 18th St, New York, NY 10011, USA I work in a pretty fancy building (Frank Gehry's first completed building in NYC), with a lot of snacks and beverages, nerf guns, Nintendo Wii, ping pong table, go kart, massage chair, etc. The work is interesting and challenging, and never boring. But even so, it wouldn't be anywhere near as rewarding if not for the wonderful people I spend each day collaborating with. I work with an exceptional group of extremely talented, intelligent, creative, personable, and caring people, which make going to work every day fulfilling. I would also be remiss if I didn't call out Lindsay and Ivy, my designers that make my life infinitely easier every minute of every working day, and whom I could never replace, even if I went through every other designer on the planet.
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Naperville, IL, USA
What is the best gift you've received?
32 months ago
1995 • Naperville, IL, USA When I graduated high school, R.E.M. were playing in NJ on the same day as my graduation. So my parents bought me tickets to go to Illinois, to stay with my old childhood friends, and go to the R.E.M. show there with them. Seeing my all-time favorite band, and hanging out with my best friends from grade school, right before graduation, was the best gift I ever received.
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