3) whats your favorite/least favorite quality about yourself; why

I’ll do least favorite first for my own benefit.

Least favorite: I really despise the way I always end up making things about me. Like I’ll be talking and I’ll notice how boring I am so I’ll kind of panic and keep talking until someone points out that I’m being rude or mean or annoying because I don’t really notice when I’m being rude on my own, then I’ll just not talk and people will be confused as to why I’m not talking while I just sit there thinking about how I wish I had never started talking. And then I think about how much I hated high school but by the end of it I really didn’t engage in much social activity and it was actually quite freeing and kind of wishing I could go back to that. And before I know it I’m either crying in my room while my friends are in the living room wondering what’s wrong or I’m pacing around the living room at four in the morning very quietly yelling at myself for god knows what and trying to stay away from the knives in the kitchen and then it takes so long to sleep after that and I wake up the next morning confused as to why I thought things where falling apart and then I talk to people normally but after a few days the cycle repeats itself and it’s always about me being so self-centered. And I hate it.

Favorite: I’m still here.

10) do you believe in ghosts

I cannot say with certainty given my limited knowledge base, but from my own personal observations I do believe it is possible to perceive some sort of alien presence due to the influence of physics or psychology that is unknown to the person. It is very reasonable to me to observe something that may not be there in my mind because I am unfamiliar with the entirety of the situation. This can range from not knowing a window is cracked open and wondering why the curtains are swaying, to heightened paranoia and fear surrounding the thought of some unwelcome person being in my room while I sleep and thus feeling a force pushing down on my mattress that was merely a figment of my imagination. So, to answer the question: I do not believe in ghosts.

11) what are your ambitions

I have had a lot of trouble rediscovering my ambitions lately because I’ve gotten lazy since coming to college, but recently I’ve been able to reconnect with what I see myself doing in the future. I just recently joined this exoskeleton build team at my university that a friend of mine started a few months ago and it’s really reminding me of what I want to do with my engineering degree. I switched from biomedical engineering to mechanical engineering, and I’m really glad I did, but for awhile people kept asking me what I wanted to do with my mechanical engineering degree. I knew I had wanted to maybe go into prosthetics if I had continued on the biomedical route, but I really don’t like chemistry or what the biomedical engineering degree offered, so I switched. And now I can start talking passionately about exoskeletons if someone asks me what I want to do with my degree.

However, I also dream of living in New York City. I have a lot of relatives there and I’ve always loved visiting, but I don’t really see much opportunity there with mechanical engineering. I’ve looked into mechanical engineering positions with companies that work with stage technology, which would be something I am very interested in, but it would probably be difficult to get a job in that in NYC right off the bat. I could work my way up and then maybe find myself working on theatre productions in NYC, which would be really fucking cool, but I haven’t invested a lot of time into researching this kind of thing. In any case, hopefully I will still end up in New York City.

But no matter what, my ideal situation would either be (1) living alone in an apartment with a cat and having a lot of money to do cool things with it like see shows and donate huge sums of money to important things or whatever, or (2) idk I could also see myself working some job where that would literally just be my life like on a boat or something like I have no interest in forming romantic attachments with people or starting a family or anything so I might as well do that, it could be cool.

15) what is your favorite memory 

I could very easily write about various times in my life where I felt the relief of passing a class or graduating high school or playing hooky or running in the schoolyard or idk whatever kids are doing these day, but that’s easy and boring. I’m going to take us, as readers, back to the 90s. Well, I am pretty sure it was the 90s. Like I’m pretty sure this was summer of 1999 but it’s one of my earliest memories and I really don’t have a frame of reference but I’m pretty sure I was almost four at the time so let’s just say it was then and get on with it.

My maternal grandmother went to an art camp every summer that was basically just a bunch of old people doing art which is super cool and I guess that summer my mom took my family to visit her. I don’t really know any context behind this event, and I’m not sure I’m actually remembering it or just remembering it from being told about it, but I know it happened. At some point during one of the evenings while we were there, they had everyone get together in some sort of auditorium. I was probably pretty small, but in my mind I remember it being very large, and reminiscent of a big fighting pit like the Colosseum. They had the children go down to the bottom of this pit with all lights blazing down on us, and had us play limbo. For little three year old me this was already pretty easy given my youthful flexibility and height, but my ambition also blazed like the spotlights searing against my skin. Us kids were surrounded by hundreds of eyes watching from above, and I knew this was my place to really make a name for myself. I was easily one of the last kids left, and by the final round, the stick was only a few inches off the ground. The other kid left besides me had given up and just stepped over the stick and joined the rest of the children, but I knew what I had to do. I got down on my back, sucked my stomach in and turned my head so the side so it was pressed against the dirt floor, and just squirmed under that bar like a snake. I rose from the ground to a thunderous applause and people making their way down to the center of the room to congratulate me on my triumph and effort. I was known for the rest of my time at that camp as the little kid who totally killed it at limbo, and I haven’t had a more glorious moment since.