I used to hate writing. I was always better at math and science in school. But I have found, especially in the past couple of years, that I am much more articulate in writing than in speaking aloud. Writing helps me refine my thoughts, and I have come to deeply enjoy it. I'm starting this blog primarily because I believe I'll genuinely enjoy writing for it.

Blog may not be the right word, though. While I do anticipate writing about what's going on in my life, my focus will be on sharing ideas that are on my mind. These ideas will be derived from my own personal experiences and observations. I hope that you will find these ideas engaging, but I cannot guarantee they will be broadly applicable. I am only a sample size of one, after all.

I should introduce myself! My name is John Reinstra. I was born 22 years ago in Palo Alto, California. I grew up in nearby Menlo Park and was fortunate to have the resources and support I needed to pursue a top-tier education, culminating in a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Stanford. I taught myself to program in a variety of languages and build full stack web applications—skills I used in high school to build an algorithmic cryptocurrency trading service with two good friends and an SMS bot that sent me the school cafeteria lunch menu every morning, among other projects. From these projects, I gained much of the experience needed to succeed as a backend engineering intern at Robinhood in 2017. I loved the internship so much that I joined Robinhood full time in October 2017 and worked there while completing the remainder of my college classes. I consider myself very lucky to be where I am today, and I hope to use my resources and abilities to help solve the problems facing us today and in the future.

I have a lot of things I want to write about. I’m looking forward to sharing my thoughts with you. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more!