About Jenna

This is the part where I'm supposed to convince you that I'm a super interesting person whom you want to read about for the foreseeable future, right? Talk about putting a girl under some pressure. 

OK, boring stuff first.

I was adopted from South Korea at three months old and made a five-person family an even six. My parents had three boys and wanted a girl, so rather than applying the concept of "just keep trying" and becoming the next Dugger family, they decided to seal the deal with an adoption. Works for me. I lived in Hermiston, Ore., for most of my life, but spent over eight years collectively in the midwest before moving back to Hermiston for those awesome adolescent years. I came to Corvallis, Ore., in 2006 to do that college thing, and after jumping around from about four different degrees, I finally settled in with nutrition and exercise science. Six years later, I got a bachelor's degree in that biz, and became certified as a health fitness specialist and a sports nutritionist, which definitively satisfies my lifelong goal of becoming an "-ist" in life. I never cared what, I just always wanted to be an "-ist." So what does that mean for me? Basically that I'm filled with all the knowledge I need to know to kick my own ass every day for not following it the way I know I always should. I currently work as a personal trainer, sports nutritionist, and lifestyle coach at the Salem Family YMCA.

Random stuff (and what most who know me would understand better) next.

• I'm incredibly obsessively compulsive about most things; whether that's a blessing or a curse, I'm not sure.
• I'm one of those people who isn't great at any one thing, but average at most things I try. It's actually quite annoying.
• I was always scrawny and never exercised until I was 20 years old, so now I spend my life trying to get others more active.
• I sort of have this distaste for children, in that I think it might be fun to punt them across a field. I talk to them like they are my peer and they don't seem to get that, which I don't care for. That being said, I also have this crazy need to overprotect them when they are in my presence... that is when I'm not laughing at them for tripping or having a melt down to begin with.
• I like to listen to music really loudly in my car and sing at the top of my lungs. I know everyone says this, but seriously, you can hear me coming a block down the street. And sometimes just to freak myself out, I like to turn down the radio really quickly just to hear my own voice. This is when I realize I probably don't have a future on American Idol.
• I have a shoe fetish yet an overall disgust for feet. Go figure.
• I'm a heels-and-jeans type of girl, which means no matter the function, that's what I'm wearing. I find myself looking overdressed mostly, incredibly under-dressed frequently, and perfectly dressed rarely.
• People are overall extremely confused by my outward appearances being reasonably girly, and yet once they get to know me, they find out just how male-minded I am. Yes, I'm the one in heels hocking a loogie on the sidewalk.
• I like to bring up poop in general conversations just to make people feel uncomfortable.
• I can't say the words "wolf" or "tsunami" without really having to give it thought beforehand.
• I tend to give things animal-like descriptions, so if you hear me describing something as a bear flu or referring to your hands as paws, don't mind me.
• I can't stop biting my cuticles; I will never have pretty hands.
• I never take the top lid off the stack at coffee houses, the first straw out of the bin at movie theaters, or the first scrap of toilet paper in a public restroom.
• One could say I'm somewhere between a chick and a broad.