Hello! My name is Dana Russo. I am 24 years old and live in Caldwell. I will be graduating from Montclair in Spring 2013 :) Aside from going to school, I work full-time as a bartender at a Irish pub, so I am always busy for the most part. Some hobbies that I enjoy are gardening and snowboarding. Whenever I can find the time I like to pick up a good book to read. One of my all-time favorite authors is Stephen King. My first and best reading/literacy moment was when I around the age of five/six. I remember finally being able to read my favorite book, Good Night Moon, from front to back. I was so excited that I could read it, I copied the sentences, word for word in a notebook that I had (I think my parents still have this notebook somewhere).

My latest reading memory was very recent. For two years, I have been studying to become a Cicerone. A Cicerone is just like a wine sommelier, but instead it is for beer. For all of this time, I have been reading multiple texts on the histories, styles, ingredients, and processes involved in beer. I just recently took the exam last Wednesday in Brooklyn. The exam was very challenging (3 hours long, about 200 short answer questions, 3 essays, and a tasting portion). Anyways, by the time the exam date was here, my eyes were ready to fall out of my head from all the reading/writing I did! The topic that I have been studying might sound silly to some, but it is very interesting and has an extensive amount of history involved within it. Hopefully I passed, there is only about 300 Cicerones in the world, I will find out my results in two months.