Photic Sneeze Reflex

I've had a tumultuous experience with reading books. Due to quizbowl, I've had an obligation to read a wide array of poetry, plays, and other veins of literature. In that vein, I've read a lot of novels. I'm trying my best not to sound pretentious here, but by a lot, I mean a lot. Since freshman year, I've grinded through such great classics as Jane Austen's  Persuasion , Upton Sinclair's  The Jungle , even Leo Tolstoy's  War and Peace. Unfortunately, this incessant push to read books drove my joy and desire for reading into the ground. Halfway into sophomore year, reading became more of a chore that I felt obligated to do instead of something I could do for fun. I was forcing myself to read 50 pages a night of books like  Vanity Fair , absolutely dreading it and questioning why I was even still reading. I think I got burnt out, but by the time summer hit that year I couldn't keep doing it. Reading was a waste of time when I could just as easily lo...

Back when I was 13 or so, my Boy Scout troop planned a weekend backpacking trip to Shawnee National Forest in Southern Illinois. If you haven't been down there before, it's a really beautiful place. It's this hilly, sprawling region that balances out the rest of the state's flatness with a whole lot of elevation change. We figured it would be a nice introduction to backpacking, considering it was "relatively" nearby and a pretty good start to rugged terrain. After all, Southern Illinois had mountains, but they were Illinois mountains so, you know, easy. We went down to Shawnee on Memorial Day weekend and found a campsite to spend Friday night at. The plan was to drive over to the trailhead on Saturday and hike 12 miles up to a campsite close to a road, so that we could do some  resupply (because we were just starting backpacking), hike about 8 more miles to another campsite on Sunday, and then drive home Monday morning. Pretty easy, yeah? What would a group ...

Yes that is in fact an actual word recognized by the Oxford English Dictionary. If it helps at all, the word is supposed to be understood as broken up in the following way: zenzi-zenzi-zenzic. It's a bit easier to read and pronounce that way. Of course, you probably want to know what the hell it's supposed to mean. Simply put, it's a number raised to the eighth power. So if you have x, the zenzizenzizenzic of x is x^8 . It's a weird word with some whacky history behind it, which is why I love it so much. I found the word back in the summer between 7th and 8th grade. Because I was a strange child, I figured it would be fun if I tried searching for some weird words online. I've always kind of liked lexicography, which I understand is insanely nerdy, but some part of me finds it incredibly interesting to learn about. I pretty quickly found this website called the Phrontistery, which boasted having the largest collection of insanely weird and archaic words in the ...

So I have two dogs, one named Lola and one named Domino. Lola is a dachshund, Domino is a beagle-Rottweiler mix. I'll let you imagine how exactly happened. For the sake of simplicity, I'm just gonna talk about Domino. She's had kind of a rough life so far. I wanna say we got Domino when I was in 5th grade. I went up to Rantoul after school one day with my mom and brothers to pick her up from the shelter. She's jet-black, except for a white stripe running down from her chin down to the rest of her underside. When we were taking her back, I had to carry her in my lap. It was really weird, because she wasn't really excited or jumpy. More than anything else, she just seemed scared. She sat still the entire way back, only moving to readjust herself. Nowadays if she tried sitting on me she would probably crush something. Domino's become much larger over the seven years we've had her. She grew about two feet longer and much heavier in the span ...

Alright, well depending on how these blog topics end up playing out for the semester, I might be talking a lot about some topics related to this part of my life. For now, let me tell you about getting out of my comfort zone and one of the...interesting experiences I had working for the Boy Scouts. For backstory, I was a camp counselor the summer before and after freshman year of high school. I worked at a place called Camp Drake, a Boy Scout camp a few miles outside of Oakwood. The whole gist of the camp is teaching young boys scout skills and helping them earn merit badges in order for them to get closer to gaining the ever-so-coveted Eagle Scout recognition. The camp is kind of run down and a little trashy, but it's camp, you know? You go out there to camp, so your expectations are already low. The staff is just there to make sure that you have a good time. The second year I was out there, I got paid to teach at this program area known as First Year, which was more geared tow...