I think throughout this process some of the hardest things have been looking at things I remember well and the things I have strong emotions attached to. Often these things go hand in hand where the stronger I feel towards a certain memory the more likely I am to better remember and recall the specific details of that event. Something that has been easier than I thought it would be was just making the list itself. I was kind of surprised at how many ideas kind of just came at me out of nowhere. Things I thought I forgot about I remembered and it was fairly easy creating the list. I think I am planning on narrowing my topic down to one of the things I wrote about yesterday for one of the prompts. Something having to do with me listening to the beats and music of a song rather than the words when on a car ride with my dad.

I think out of all the events in my timeline, the most vivid would have to be the time I tried to make ramen for me and my two brothers. I don’t remember how old I was but I was pretty young probably around 8 or 9. It was not really a truly impressive nor super embarrassing moment. I ended up trying to cook ramen for the first time and burning the bottom of the pot. It particularly stands out because this is one of the most vivid memories I have with my 2 older brothers. It was not anything significant, but I do remember an angry mom coming home thinking the house was going to burn down. I guess it stands out the most to me because my middle brother loves to rag me about it each day of my life. I have no idea why but he loves to make fun of me in that way.

Although I was not present in class, I enjoyed watching everyone’s presentation on zoom. I really liked hearing the two similar yet different book talks on the same book by Lauren and Lani. I am not exactly an avid hiker and I do not consider it to be something I do in my free time. However, they both do well to display the protagonist’s story and various interesting things that could interest me. I also enjoyed Colby’s book talk. I never knew the horseshoe belonged to sea biscuit. I like how Colby is able to critique the parts of the book he did not particularly like and how it would be different if things were changed. I am not sure just yet what I will read for this quarter but after all I heard from my class mates there is so many to choose from. I may look at some of the books that no one read yet.

As for my own book talk I feel as though I did decently. It was a little awkward reading into a screen with no one on the other end. It was not as intimidating as a speech or presentation, but just as difficult from the pure awkwardness. At times I felt I was pacing too fast and at other times I felt I needed more eye contact although I was not sure where in particular to look. I had fun listening to everyone’s book talks.

If I could meet anyone in the world it would probably be Will Smith. I am not exactly sure why but everything about his character just seems so cool. He has made such an impressive name for himself and has such a deep and rich history behind it. From his days a rapper to actor to even singer it seems like Will Smith has done it all. I have personally watched many of the shows and movies he has been in. With my personal favorites being Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, I Am Legend, The Pursuit of Happyness and Men in Black. One question I would ask him is what was one of the biggest challenges on his road to success and the second question would be how he overcame those challenges. It is without a doubt Will Smith must have dealt with a lot in order to get to the place he is today and I think especially for someone who is so experienced would be interesting questions for me to ask.

I really liked everyone’s book talks today. Out of all of them I think the most memorable would be coming from Dylan’s as well as Ali’s. I really liked how Dylan seemed to find a lot of positives and made good critiques about his book despite not being a part of the “directed audience”. It was really interesting to me for him to describe a book that is typically out of my reading comfort zone. Despite that, Dylan’s presentation piqued my interest about the book. I also really liked the passage Ali chose about the paper bag. I think it was really effective how she analyzed but also just the plain choice of the passage itself. With no context it seemed pretty simple, but turned out to be quite disheartening. It really caught my attention and I enjoyed it.

Would you rather have to grow all of your own food for the rest of your life or only eat what you can carry in your arms out of the grocery store? Personally I would choose growing all of my own food. And as time consuming, tedious, and expensive the work is, I think it is a much more sustainable lifestyle than trying to micromanage small meals here and there each day just based off what you try to pack into your arms. It is likely you will lack many essential items as part of your diet. However, by growing my own food I will be forced to develop important skills in food management and planning. Also animals will likely be expensive and I love meat but going vegetarian should not be that bad. I consider “growing” food including raising animals. But using that definition at the very least I would have hens to get eggs from.

I am not really sure on what to talk about but I have been procrastinating a lot on my homework by looking at my phone, irritating my brothers, and flat out just doing nothing. So I guess this free write will be out procrastination. I think there are days that everyone has when they just get this motivation and determination to be productive in their day. Whether something is productive or not I think it is objective and specific to every individual. Personally, productivity looks something like getting urgent matters finished. This comes in the shape of chores, exercise, but most importantly schoolwork. But then in comes everyone’s worst enemy procrastination. Everybody talks about it and everybody hates yet we can not stop doing it. Is it an addiction? A human tendency? Well I do not know the answer to the questions and I am far too lazy to look it up. Which is just another form of procrastination I do. Time to time I am able to zone in and grind those essays and homework I would put off until the last minute. However, after years of experience I can say that pulling some kind of all nighter or sitting at a desk for hours nonstop is not worth it. It would be much easier if I instead acted like those model students that start their things early so they do not have to stress out so much in the end. The problem with that is that even when I do get a good start ahead, I end up not doing anything until the time right before its due date. I definitely do not enjoy doing those things so I keep wondering why it is I continue to put myself in those situations. I can go and on about my procrastination habits including one of my more stranger ones. For this habit I end up doing homework for a class due days in advance just to put off the more urgent thing that is due the next day. That pretty much sums up my rant on procrastination and if anyone would like to help me please feel free to give me some tips.

I think for me I still have a decent amount of work that I need to do. My book is finished but like most people I just started on the process not too long ago. Because the book review is pretty structured I have a pretty good idea on how I want to organize it as well as the general ideas I will be putting into each paragraph. As for my book talk, I still have quite a long way to go in terms of creating and practicing majority of my speech.

I think the word “ok” best describes my entire mood as of right now. It is not the most fun and exciting time of my life. I do get to stay home and focus on certain things such as gaming or doing activities I could not normally do in a busy school week. However, after a week of lounging around and not doing anything I feel as if it should be summer already. Before the official quarantine order I was able to go surfing everyday for about 4 of the 7 days of the week. And I had a lot of fun because I did not have anything else packed into my busy schedule and what not. It was a very leisurely break and while quite boring, I understand how important it is for us to have social distancing in order to decrease the spread of the virus. I am kind of astonished at the numbers in the US. We are now the leading country in terms of corona virus cases which I think would not even come close to happening. But that is pretty much out of my control so I can not do much about it. I got my SAT back and I did not do as good as I wanted to but I did ok. Overall I’m in a pretty meh type of mood as I could care more or less about my life.

I would rather be the smartest person in the room because intelligence can help me in a number of ways. If I was the smartest in the room, I can still find a way to make people laugh by using my intelligence. If I was just funny there is no guarantee that I will have any intelligence whatsoever. While being funny is cool it is not always great to have. If I was in some kind of somber situation where it would not be appropriate to laugh and I still make people laugh then it could turn people against me. Also there are different types of respect associated with each one. Just because someone respects you as someone funny does not mean they respect how smart you are.