“Bleed on paper! Fight your evil twin. Freewrite!” Mr. Weinstein’s mantra permeated every student’s mind in the classroom—especially mine. He handed me a pen and paper, but saw the puzzled look on my face. “Write whatever you want. You are the creator,” he said.
I took it to heart; the pen became my faucet and the paper the reservoir to my stream of consciousness.
I never tried an exercise like this before, so I really didn’t know what to write. I guess to start, thoughts of the first physics test of the year that I just bombed came to mind, as John Kasich’s chants of “Jeez, oh man,” started to ramble in my head.
I always envied physics for its creative problem-solving and application, but this unit incorporated material from last year’s Physics 1—yeah, I was basically screwed. Nonetheless, physics has been my favorite course throughout high school because it constitutes innovative thinking.
Meanwhile, my first home game of the year is today, which is such a great way to start the championship run. I’ve been eagerly training all summer—anticipating this season—and I am ready to lead my teammates through battles of thick and thin, rain or snow. It didn’t matter. I could feel the fire in their eyes. It was only a matter of time to rekindle it.
Oh! College apps—the dumbbell weighing on my conscience. What do I write? What do I do to stand out? What do I want colleges to know about me? These were typical thoughts racing through a typical high-school senior’s mind.
For one thing, it’s a lot of work: filling out the application correctly, browsing colleges that fit your social and financial niche, writing and editing a ton—like a crap, crap load—of essays and supplements.
But, in the end, the amount of work put into the process is how much you get out of it. In hindsight, it’s just the first semester that kills; second semester will be easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Oh, crap, two minutes left.
I’ve always wondered what the best type of humor is. Is it originality? Whimsicality? Stupidity?
I think half comes from improvised innovation, because spontaneity captures instant appeal. The other half comes from emotional intelligence—the ability to read what makes people tick.
Understanding latent emotion, which is a quintessential skill to inherit wherever you go, allows the joker to play off different strands of humor. This can be experimented through understanding body language and inflection of responses and, if read well, the joker can experiment with various extremes of humor to unveil the subconscious appeals of his audience (obviously this is all registered subconsciously).
Oh! Finally…
“Time’s up,” Mr. Weinstein proclaimed.
