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Sorry, laying in bed dying from the black plague. I will blog later. (maybe)

Reactions to School

1. You're annoyed because it takes up 7 hours of your day
2. Fury because your parents didn't tell you that it lasts 13 years
3. Anger because people don't know how to walk in the hallways
4. Annoyed again because you spent so much time at school yet you don't know how to pay bills or taxes or take out a loan, but I can graph a polynomial function!! 
5. Sometimes excited when you show up to class and your teacher has the word "Video" written up on the board
6. Hateful when you see the words "Test on Thursday" written on the board.
7. Stressed because you have 3 tests and 5 quizzes this week and you did absolutely nothing related to studying over the weekend
8. Jumping off the walls excited when your teacher says the test has been moved to next week (rarely)
9. Pissed because you have to wait 7 minutes in line to go to the bathroom 
10. Tired because it takes all of your energy to walk from Culinary to 4A
11. Calm because there are 3000 other people who suffer like you

Traditions!

I LOVE THANKSGIVING! I think it's a great holiday. Thanksgiving means it is now socially acceptable to blast Christmas music 24/7. Awesome. 

Ok. In my opinion, traditions are a great thing. I think they started (or at least in my family) because we wanted to remember something that somebody did. For example, my great grandma always made fish on Thrusday's, so now we all make fish for dinner on Thursday's. In the Gonikman house, Sunday is cleaning day (referred to as Sunday Fun-day). My grandma cleaned on Sunday's, my mom cleans on Sunday's which means that I clean on Sunday's. Although these aren't the super cool, super fun traditions like always putting up the tree on December 1st or making Turkey on Thanksgiving, they are still traditions. We do it because it's easy. We don't have to make up anything new, just do the same thing as last year. Although it can be boring sometimes, I don't think there is anything wrong with traditions and don't find them bizarre at all. It's just, I don't know, normal.

Happy Holidays! 

Blaaah Creativity

I seriously dread the word creativity. I hate doing school projects where any sort of arts and crafts is involved because my mind goes blank. I wasn't a creative child either. My imagination doesn't go far. I guess my brain just isn't wired that way. I think creativity is an awesome thing and maybe I just have to learn it, or maybe people are born with it but either way I lack creativity.

Since its like 10:30 and I decided not to write out a story about my video that I found because I'm really tired and lazy (judge me). So I decided that I would just do a short condensed version of what is coming to my brain as I'm watching this.

Basically, it's the year 2020 and the world has been attacked by Aliens who come from Mirror Planet. They cause chaos by flipping everything upside and creating a mirror image on top of us. People are trapped on one side with all the aliens who are basically releasing a "Purge" type lifestyle and the goal is to get to the other side of "mirror". It's not that easy though because these aliens are trying to kill you/ turn you into kung fu zombies. Once you complete the tasks that are set for you, you're safe and live on the other side like nothing ever happened. Catch is, you have a week or else you're turned into a kung fu zombie. THE END!.


https://vimeo.com/70573323

Observations

• A turkey has an average of 3000 feathers
• Lots of TV shows are focused on nationalities --> Russian Dolls, Shahs of Sunset, Jersey Shore
• Girls bathroom is always on the outside of the hall
• Trojan head has the names of cities in the district around it
• Quizzes/Tests on Fridays or Mondays are really annoying and I tend to do worse on them
• More houses put up decorations on Wednesday night
• American Girl Dolls are waaaaay too expensive
• I hate people who come into Caribou, sit down, and don't buy anything *cough, cough. Stupid, annoying middle schoolers*

Too early for Christmas

I love Christmas more than anybody on the planet. Seriously. I love the twinkling lights of the houses, and the Christmas trees, and the cookies, and the music, and the movies. I love pretty much everything about Christmas but what I love most is the timing. In my opinion, Christmas-y behavior is appropriate after Thanksgiving. The day after Thanksgiving is when the movies should start, and the music can be played and the decorations can be put up. But, what I have noticed recently is that Christmas came too early this year, way too early.

I didn't really notice that Christmas was all around me until Saturday at the Mall of America. My mom and I had just walked in and a heard a little snippet of a conversation a middle aged man was having with his wife. "WHAT IS GOING ON?!" He yelled half laughing half serious. "I don't get! It's not even Thanksgiving yet! Why are the tree's up! What is this music!?". I didn't even know what he was talking about until I looked around. Christmas trees everywhere, ornaments hanging from the ceiling and Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" playing in the background. I was shocked. My first thought was "Damn, why didn't they just start this in September". And then I remembered, they did. Well not the MOA exactly, but Costco has had blow up snowmen since late September. A house just down the street has had lights up since Halloween. This is ridiculous. As I get older, I get more and more upset when people start celebrating Christmas early. Does this make me a Scrooge? I hope not but seriously, Christmas before Thanksgiving is just not right.

I don't know what it is. Is it my age? When I was little, I would have celebrated Christmas before Thanksgiving, hell, I would have celebrated it before Labor Day but now it just seems wrong. I think celebrating Christmas before Thanksgiving makes Christmas a little less special so stop. If you're one of those people just stop. Thanks and happy holidays.

Outliers- Final BLA

For my BLA my group and I read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. The book focused on the stories of successful people in our past and what it was that made them successful. Gladwell's stories ranged from why the Beatles are successful to why the greatest hockey players are all born at the beginning of the year. There was not really a common factor to every successful person he mentioned but Gladwell did give numerous examples for many of the "variables" that contribute to a successful human. The book was split into two parts: opportunity and legacy.  Gladwell also mentioned that it is important to focus on not what a successful person is like but where they come from. The second part of the book focused more on the cultural aspects of successful people while the first part was based purely on opportunity/luck.

As mentioned Gladwell's book focused on a number of important people in our world. Because it was difficult to find one documentary about "successful" people my group and I decided to focus on one particular story. We decided to watch a documentary on Bill Gates and see the similarities and differences in how he was portrayed in the book vs. the documentary.

In the book, Gladwell focused primarily on the beginning of Bill Gates' career. Bill Gates was in the part about opportunity so a lot of focus was put on the opportunities that Gates got. Gladwell put a lot of emphasis on the a young Bill Gates and the head start he got at his high school. As an upperclassman in High School, a mother's club donated a software/teletype to the school for the kids to use. Gates and his friends spent a ton of time in that room often until about 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. After a few years, it was estimated that Gates had reached the 10,000 hour mark- the "expert" number. Gladwell said that anybody who practiced an instrument for roughly 10,000 hours became an expert. Many studies have been done on the elite piano players, or the elite athletes and usually they all have one thing in common; how much they practice. They all usually practice for upwards of 10,000 hours of their life and that is exactly what Gates did. Those 10,000 hours were what made Gates successful in the eyes of Malcom Gladwell.

I decided to compare this to how Gates was portrayed in the documentary. The teletype was mentioned in the documentary but only in passing. They mentioned that Gates spent much of his free time in that room, plugging away at software, but how much time was actually spent was never mentioned. This particular story (the most important one according to Gladwell) was only mentioned for a brief 2-3 minutes in the documentary. The rest of the time, the documentary focused on what happened AFTER Gates had dropped out of Harvard and AFTER he had already practiced for 10,000 hours.

I may be a little biased because I have just finished reading the book but I think the time that Gates spent in the computer room was incredibly important to the success he is currently experiencing. The documentary leads people to believe that Bill Gates is just naturally smart and he got all this success randomly. But, Outliers really focuses on the root of what made Gates the billionaire that he is today and that is the opportunity. The teletype and the 10,000 hours spent in that room is the key to what made Gates successful. Without all the practice he might not have ever been able to do the things he later did. If the Mother's club hadn't donated the teletype well then Gates would have never discovered his love of software and would have gone on to become a lawyer like his parents wanted him to.

I personally think that the book does a better job at getting to the root of what makes people successful. Most documentaries and films and other books make it seem like all these people are just naturally smart, and naturally have all these abilities but in most cases that is not true. There is some great opportunity hiding in the history of that person and Malcolm Gladwell does a great job at figuring out the root of successful people. I really enjoyed the book and think that everybody should read it because the facts and ideas that Gladwell brings up are just so crazy and hard to believe but when you really think about them they are true and can be applied to most successful people!