My name is Michael Kim and I was born on January 4, 1989 in Mountain View, CA.
From a very young age, I had a great interest in drawing. I would even have to say
that I was more into drawing than I was into other activities, such as playing outside.
Sure, when my friends came over I enjoyed playing with them, but drawing was always
on top of my list. Besides from drawing, there was really one other thing that I really
had a passion for and that was cars. As a young kid, I was fascinated by the idea of a
person being able to control a machine with their hands. Whenever I had a chance to sit
in a car, I enjoyed watching the other cars drive by. This next part may seem a bit stereotypical,
but the first car that I was interested in was the second generation Mitsubishi Eclipse.
For those of you who don't get it, you will probably figure it out soon.

As I got older, my interest in cars got stronger and stronger. There was even a point where I was
more interested in cars than I was in art. Around middle school, I started getting interested in drawing cars.
Being that I had no experience, my attempts were usually very unsuccessful. Even with all the art classes
that I was taking, my car drawing skills were unsatisfactory. As I was getting ready to move on to high school,
I also started thinking about college. While I knew that college was sill far off, I knew that I would be attending
one someday. It was during my first year of high school, that I really decided on going to an art college and
learning car design. During my high school years, I concentrated a lot on my drawing and did what I could in
school to pass with a decent grade. After graduating from high school, using the portfolio that I had made,
I tried applying to several art schools. After getting back the letters, I carefully went over all of the options
with my parents. The school that I ended up deciding on was the Cleveland Institute of Art. At first, I was quite
nervous about leaving California and living on my own on the other side of the country. As it got closer to the day
of my flight out of California, I started saying my goodbyes to everyone around me. While I knew that it wasn't going
to be easy to live on my own in a completely new place, I also knew that it was going to be a good experience.