It is Wednesday, my dudes. I haven't been this late in a minute. Usually I do okay, but this week was busy. Also, I have blog readers! If you're reading this on the blog, congratulations.
Let me think, what have I been up to... oh, that's right, getting absolutely curbstomped by my French writing assignments. 8/10 is not good. I'm yet to beat my high score of 8.5 which is so infuriating because I try to push myself sooo hard on those writing assignments so that my vocabulary actually grows, and then the feedback comes back and it's like "hey by the way you suck." All this to say that I have to turn in a much larger paragraph tomorrow, so wish me luck or something.
This weekend was lit, though. I stayed up till 3 hot tubbing then woke up at 7 to go to St. George with some friends and it was so much fun. If you get my Instagram stories, you probably saw that I stayed up late beating a dice game on that trip. If you don't, then you have no clue what I am talking about. Look up "gong-gi from Squid Game" and you'll see what I'm referring to. Basically, a player takes 5 little stones and they have to do a series of moves that involves way too much hand eye coordination. The final move is the hardest: one must throw them up and land them all on the back of their hand, then toss them up from the back of the hand and catch them all in a downward motion. It is so difficult, but we promised that we weren't going to bed until it was done. Beginning at around 10, we played the game straight through to 2:30 am when I finally completed the cycle. It was murder, but the relief was unbeatable. Besides that, I got a little bit sunburned, ate at Red Robin, took pictures on my film camera, ran a 5k in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, and did absolutely no homework. It was the best.
Speaking of homework, it's been crazy these last few days. I basically live at the library just grinding out the work, but my brain is gaining so much mass. I just did a presentation on the standard model, and my physics teacher said that he got a lot out of it that he didn't know before, so that's good. Did you know that neutrinos don't interact with photons? Definitely saw this 79 bro sleeping a little bit during the presentation, but whatever. That class has descended beyond confusing anyways. We're talking about particle wells and their widths, which I find like a totally pointless tool for understanding, but what do I know? I'm just a kid.
I've made some new friends in the last week, and they have officially ruined my sleep schedule. I was doing so good, but it's okay. They're really cool so I guess I can sacrifice. I made new friends on the St. George trip too, and they're also awesome.
I had a super epic idea to get our office on social media, so I'm gonna start filming a noice video this week to post for the premier. I'm actually pretty excited for that.
I did watch this really thought provoking French film called All Your Faces, which I highly recommend. It was about a program that pairs victims of crimes with prisoners who were sentenced for the same crimes. They meet in a group to talk to one another about what they did, why they did it, how it has affected them, etc. It has some really good themes, and I thought it did a great job at humanizing the prisoners. After the first few minutes, it was hard not to see them as people. This film made me think about prejudices I didn't know I had. Such an awareness makes it easier to limit those subconscious thoughts and condemn their appearance in our behavior. The film also raised important arguments about the penal (don't laugh, you 12 year old boy) situation in developed countries and how we claim to be this highly progressive, nuanced, sophisticated, and scrupulous society, yet dehumanize people who commit crimes; at times, they may "deserve" what they get, but most of the time they are the result of broken situations. Others are also in the result category, but the crimes are committed against them. Such is the difference between criminals and victims: both are the output of disadvantaged circumstances, but one decided they were going to do something about it. Unfortunately, the choice was a bad one, but to what level should they be punished when their history is considered? How do we draw a line? What efforts can we apply to make the best of the past? All good questions, all found in the movie.
What else? I don't think things have been super exciting lately, mostly just busy.
I guess that's it, then. See you next week.
Will Ott
Yes, we really slept like this (please don't tell the honor code office)
No comments:
Post a Comment