Journal: Experience with a Toy/Game
Back in the day when I was a kid, I used to collect Legos. It all started one Hanukah when my aunt bought me a Lego from the Blacktron outer space series. The Lego was a model of s space base and came with a landing pad and a small spacecraft in addition to the main base. At that time I was very interested in outer space and from the moment I saw the Lego, I became obsessed with it. Over the next few years, I would get new space Legos to add to my collection as often as possible. For a period of a few years, every present I got for every holiday was a Lego. For the first few years, I stored the Legos in a corner of my room where I set them up to make it look like a planetary space base. After a few more years passed, I collected so many Legos that they took up too much space in my room. For my birthday that year, my dad bought me a huge space airport Lego that came with a battery-powered monorail. After receiving this, my dad and I decided we had to get the Legos out of my room and into somewhere with more space. We decided to build a table in the basement so I could set up everything there. We went out to a lumbar yard and home depot and got all the supplies we needed to make a huge 8’ x 4’ table. After building the table and setting up all the Legos on it, we used fishing line to hand the spacecraft Legos from the ceiling to make it look like they were flying. We also put black light bulbs in the lights above the table to give it a more futuristic and space look. A few years later I finally lost my interest in the Legos and we ended up giving them all away
Journal: Words to
Describe Yourself
Adventurous, Determined, Driven
A time that best illustrates these three traits was this past summer when I went on a thirty day Outward Bound mountaineering course in Colorado. The thirty days that I spent there were some of the most challenging, both mentally and physically, days of my life. The hardest day of the trip was the day before we set off on our 3-day solo. During that day, we covered more distance than on any other day and climbed more peaks than we had previously climbed. We spent most of the day above treeline, exposed to the elements and the blazing sun. In addition, since we were above treeline the whole day we did not have access to water. With the blazing sun on our backs throughout they day, we had finished almost all of our water by mid-day, with the majority of the hike still in front of us. This left us with almost no water for almost 5 hours. At the altitude we were at, nearly 13,000ft, you really need to constantly drink water in order to stay hydrated and alive. Although I felt fine for a while, as the long 10 hour hike continued on I began to heel the effects of dehydration. At first I only felt a slight headache and felt slightly weaker. By the end of the day, I was almost crawling to reach our campsite because I had absolutely no energy left. I basically tumbled down the last hill, desperate to reach camp but not having enough energy to really walk. Despite my condition, I pushed myself to walk the final few meters to camp. Upon reaching our campsite, I instantly collapsed and within a few minutes after drinking some water, I fell asleep on my sleeping bag.
One of my most vivid childhood memories is how I used to be afraid of the alarm system in my old house when I was younger. I am not exactly sure how it all started by I was afraid of the alarm for at least a few years. I remember several occasions when I woke up before my parents in the morning, went into the kitchen, and accidentally closed a drawer slightly harder than I should have. The noise made by the closing drawer would set off the alarm, which my parents had not yet deactivated. There was obviously something wrong with the system because other times it would just go off for no reason whatsoever. At some point during those years, I began to have a reoccurring nightmare about the alarm that only heightened my fear of it. I remember always looking up at the little white box in the corner of the hall that was the alarm. The alarm seemed to give off an evil aura and gave me the sense that it was always watching me and my every move. In the nightmare that I had quite frequently, I was in the house alone with the alarm. Out of nowhere, the alarm would go off and for some reason I would have to run out of my bed and down the hallway to the staircase that was opposite of the alarm box. I would then lie face down on the stairs and the alarm would begin to talk to me in the most evil voice imaginable and tell me not to move from my place on the steps. While all this was happening, the alarm was still going off and the noise of it filled the house completely. I would huddle up against the steps as close as I could get and try to cover my ears and face to stop the terrible noise and to hide myself from the evil alarm. Soon afterwards, I would wake up and find myself covering in sweat and breathing heavily. I would run into my parents’ room and sleep with them for the night because the nightmare was so terrifying.