History

The history of medicine, the history of film, the history of roman civilization, the universe, and so much more. History encompasses all the knowledge one could hope to learn, but more than that, it teaches the process through which everything was invented or discovered, and it does so by stories.

In Sophomore history, Mr Butler used flowcharts to show how the consequences of seemingly small decisions could give something the final push to escalate to any number of huge events. For example, the marxism flowchart can single handedly explain the rise and fall of communism. And, in my opinion, ultimately, the world's economics will follow as the flowchart shows.

I also love history because it aid us in studying human behavior through how other civilizations lived. Last year, I took Latin 1; every Friday we had culture days and learned exactly how the Romans lived their everyday lives. The fact that one thousand six hundred years ago, life was so similar to today is astounding. A typical roman day, for example, would consist of leaving their apartment to go to work, then in the mid afternoon, going to the local bathhouse to exercise, swim, and steam. And in the evening families could go out to enjoy chariot races, gladiator battles, or a play.

Last year, I also took Mr Butler's World Since 1945 class, and I was propelled further into my obsession. This class didn't follow the conventional teaching style that most history teachers adapt, the lecture and test, instead we were immersed in history. We watched popular shows from that time period and country that we were studying. We listened to music, watched documentaries, and even spent time analyzing the rise of music videos and their impact on music.

We started each class by discussing current events, which was amazing for someone like me who had never gotten into watching the news. Sometimes our conversations go so carried away that we just discussed these topics for the whole class period or watched a John Oliver episode.

I felt like I was experiencing history rather than just learning about it, and I think that is why I love studying it so much. Because history allows me to learn how other people thought and did things through the legacies they left behind.

You're a Vegetarian?

I get asked this question probably anytime I go out to eat with someone. But then I reveal the fact that I still eat, grilled chicken breast (that and only that by the way, and only when it's dry); at that point "chicken is meat!" type confrontations follow. But in my eyes, I am still a vegetarian.

My non-meat eating journey began at age four. Conflicting reports from me and my mother point to two motivations: I think I just don't like the taste but my mother remembers a teacher who told me meat came from animals and that was why I denounced it. But nevertheless, at age four I stopped eating all red meat (except a single dish called galupchiki in Russian which I ate until age 8 and Israeli salami that was the bomb) and chicken, except for Israeli chicken nuggets that had corn in them (a surprisingly amazing combination).

The more years that past the less meat I ate. When I moved to America I denounced salmon as well as caviar, I stopped eating galupchiki and started calling myself a "junkfoodertarian."

By sophomore year I hadn't eaten even a piece of chicken for a year. But I realized that it was really silly, because (with all due respect for animal activists) at this point I was only refusing chicken based on my own psychological weirdness. So I decided to try and eat chicken. 

I started with a mango-chili chicken breast from Chilis, and it was really good. I started building up my chicken dishes. By junior year I would devour any grilled chicken breast in sight, and I even started eating shawarma again, which is a middle eastern sandwich with grilled chicken thighs. 

Now, even though I still only eat chicken breast (with the exception of shawarma), I seek out chicken. I get double meat in burritos and anytime there is shwarma in my vicinity you can bet I'm eating it at least once a week. So yes, I do eat chicken, and yes I do call myself a vegetarian, but what else should I called myself, a "grilledchickenbreastatarian?" I'm open to suggestions.

Craving Experience

Ever since I can remember, experiencing everything (or at least as much as I can) has been my life goal. I want to know what everything is and how everyone feels everything, and I hate missing out. 

I try to do everything I can. I do three sports (swimming, basketball, and soccer). This semester I'm taking 2 U of I classes (I wanted to take more but after some explaining from my parents that I would not survive, I settled for 2) and I only have one true free period, because I can't bring myself to sacrifice any interesting uni classes. Next semester, I have the same plan, take all the uni classes that I've always wanted, but also take all the U of I classes I can pile on.

I pile a lot onto my schedule, but if I were to have more free time, I would not make any productive use of it. I would either spend time procrastinating on all responsibilities or spend more time binge watching tv-shows.

The latter, is how I spend probably 70-90% of my current free time. While it is possible that I'm just a TV addict, I think that watching tv shows with varying subjects can really teach me about different people and their psychologies. I can get a feel for how each of the characters is going to react and the more I understand the characters, the faster I can try to figure out the psychologies of real people. I also treat TV shows as a fast way to gather mass information about a subject (i.e. I can now identify if a skeleton is male or female at a glance, thanks to Bones).  

Ultimately, I know that I can't experience everything, or even come close to be honest (http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/), but I'm always gonna fill my life with all the experiences I can; and but I've often said that if, by some chance of fate, I end up being immortal, I'm gonna spend a lifetime in each society in the world, so I can learn and study everything there is.