Hi everyone! My name is Jillian, but most people call me Jill. I have lived in New York for my entire life, born and raised in Queens, and I just graduated from Townsend Harris High School. I may not have grown up in “the city”, but since my mom works in Downtown Manhattan, I fell in love with this borough before I did with my own. As a kid, I would often take the subway with my mom to the law firm she manages on Wall Street and admire the tall buildings and well-dressed people. I made it a personal goal of mine to spend as much time exploring the rest of this place as I could, until I really knew every single nook and cranny of it.

Fast forward over ten years and I am finally getting to live out that dream as a regular commuter into Manhattan to study Computer Engineering at City College. I love the idea of technology development and my dream job is to eventually start my own business with the software that I hope to create. I’m studying Computer Engineering here as a way to achieve that.

People who are familiar with either my last name (Panagakos) or my thick, dark, curly hair usually realize pretty quickly that I’m Greek. However, what most people don’t realize is that I’m only half! The other half is Irish, Scottish, Polish, German, and a bit of French Canadian. To make things easy for everyone, though, I usually say that I’m Greekrish, an even mix of Greek and Irish. In fact, when I was younger, I used to tell everyone that I was half Greek and half McCann, hoping that they would understand exactly what I meant when I described myself by my mother’s maiden name. They usually didn’t.

These particular ethnicities may clue you in on my gigantic family. I have a younger brother, and seven first cousins. Of course, though, in a Greekrish family, you are just as close with your second cousins and third cousins once removed as you are with your own siblings. Family is incredibly important to me. I try to find family everywhere I go, from my own blood relatives, to my neighbors, to the people I train with in Tae Kwon Do.

Me with just a fraction of all my cousins.

If you want to get to know me, the first thing you need to know is that I have been training in the martial arts for almost ten years. I have earned my second degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do (hopefully to earn my third degree this coming June!) and my red belt in nunchaku do. On the weekends I’m an instructor and I am passionate about working with the students in the school to learn the art, and watching many of them grow up. One of my students, who I first started teaching almost 6 years ago, recently earned his black belt and joined me in the ranks of instructors. I was just as proud of him when he was promoted as I was of myself when I earned my own.

I hope that you enjoyed a glimpse into who I am, and I can’t wait to meet all of you! I love to make new friends, so I’ll probably be talking your ear off about some of the music, TV shows, or restaurants that I obsess over in no time 🙂

A photo of myself being presented with my black belt by my instructor and my family from 2009.