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"But that you're only getting ready to say nice to meet you/to somebody you never knew/ You" Faith Marie
Hi! For this blog post, I read A Fable for the Living.
Dear Ali Rose,
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Hi! This is the first blog of many for my English Composition class. Assignment one was to respond to the Proust Questionnaire, which is thirty-five questions written by Marcel Proust. Proust was a French writer who popularized the questionnaire as a parlor game and believed that one’s true self was revealed when answering these questions. I considered these questions to be very thought-provoking, and the link is down below for you to discover your true self.
The Proust Questionnaire _1.__What is your idea of perfect happiness? My idea of happiness is standing on stage after a performance with a mic on its own stand, staring out at empty rows of seats, scanning for pamphlets or flyers that advertised it on the floor, and taking a deep breath of relief and sadness. __2.__What is your greatest fear? Being abandoned or forgotten. I felt like I was an afterthought or momentarily forgotten during some family vacations and during my high school years, when my friend group started getting toxic after junior prom. __3.__What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? I can be very critical of my own work. I feel like I’m always editing and revising my work 24/7, i.e. trying to find which sentence structure’s the best, depending on what I write. __4.__What is the trait you most deplore in others? Insensitivity to people in certain situations. You don’t know what a person’s daily life is like, and you could unintentionally hurt that person or degrade them even more. __5.__Which living person do you most admire? My mom. She came from Southeast Asia, which is mostly poor, and grew up in between the Vietnam War. She’s the middle child of five sisters, and cares for her parents, i.e. my grandparents. She had 3 or 4 jobs during her high school years; and worked in a hospital and went to pharmacy school around the same time my brother and I were born. She spent many sleepless nights, but it was worth it because she received her Doctorate of Pharmacy, PharmD degree, in order to become a pharmacist. __6.__What is your greatest extravagance? Clothing. The most I’ve spent on a normal day of shopping was between 50-100 dollars or more. __7.__What is your current state of mind? I’d compare my current state of mind to a philosopher or a young child, asking annoying questions about already defined words or ideas, i.e. “What is life?” or “What is love?” __8.__What do you consider the most overrated virtue? Honesty. Everyone lies, no matter how big or small it is. __9.__On what occasion do you lie? I’ve lied on many occasions in the past, most of them were to not hurt people from foolish mistakes I made myself. __10.__What do you most dislike about your appearance? My hair texture. The only two things I hate about it is it can get very oily and you can’t run a brush or comb from the top of my head to the bottom without it getting stuck somewhere in the same section you try to brush or comb it. __11.__Which living person do you most despise? I don’t have a specific person, but I do hate celebrity-based reality shows. I think they over-exaggerate a celebrity’s daily and personal life, even though there’s some comic relief in them. __12.__What is the quality you most like in a man? Kindness. It’s like a cycle, treat people with kindness and they’ll treat you back...most of the time. __13.__What is the quality you most like in a woman? Determination. A determined woman helps to keep spirits up when your down or encourage you even more when you’re doing well. Also, a determined woman empowers other women to do something that others or they themselves think is impossible. __14.__Which words or phrases do you most overuse? “OMG”, “Ayy”, “In fact”, and I used to overuse “Truly” in the past. Also, filler words; i.e. “like”, “um”, “uh”, etc.; and greetings, but those are commonly overused by everyone. __15.__What or who is the greatest love of your life? Music. I fell in love with music when I was four years old and I still love it. __16.__When and where were you happiest? When I climbed the Sydney Harbor Bridge in Australia, August 14, 2017. I climbed the bridge with my brother and two of my cousins. The Australians were doing controlled burnings; burning bushes, branches, and other flammable items on the ground; during their afternoon to prepare for the fire season. At the climax of the climb, the sun was about to set. Our tour guide, Richard, took a picture of THE most beautiful sunset in all of Australia. The sunlight and sun were gold yellow behind the smoke. I wish I could’ve had a camera to take a picture, but, so far, it was the most amazing experience I’ve ever had. __17.__Which talent would you most like to have? Parkour skills. It’s dangerous, but cool to jump across buildings and it would be useful if you’re stuck in a moving vehicle that you didn’t want to be in. __18.__If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? How sensitive I am to things. Sometimes, I get upset over the tiniest things in the world. __19.__What do you consider your greatest achievement? Right now, I don’t know. __20.__If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be? A bear. Sleep through the majority of Winter?...yes please. __21.__Where would you most like to live? I’m stuck between Times Square, New York or somewhere in Europe. I love musicals so I would choose that area of New York. If I lived in Europe, I’d live in France or Italy. France, because of the Eiffel Tower, the Glass Palace, and to visit the Louvre. Italy, because of the canals in Venice, the Colosseum in Rome, and it's fashion capital of Milan. __22.__What is your most treasured possession? A gold necklace my mom got for her sixteenth birthday, which she gave to me on my sixteenth birthday. __23.__What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? Right now, when I failed two general chemistry exams during my last semester at college. I tried really hard to study for them, but I didn’t have a strong chemistry background, so it was extremely difficult to grasp the concepts. __24.__What is your favorite occupation? Creative writing. I write poems, lists, travel journals, etc. I wrote song lyrics when I was in middle school, but stopped because I felt like I restricted myself to just songwriting. I began journaling my daily life when I was 13, and stopped this year due to a difficulty with transitioning between high school and college. __25.__What is your most marked characteristic? Tolerance. I consider myself a very open-minded person, and everyone has a story that should be heard. __26.__What do you most value in your friends? Loyalty. Whether you’re right or wrong, friends should have each other’s backs. __27.__Who are your favorite writers? Ally Condie, Kiera Cass, and Suzanne Collins. Condie is the author of the Matched Trilogy and Cass is the author of “The Selection” series. One of my favorite genres is dystopia; the genre of the Hunger Games Trilogy that Collins wrote in, and the other two book series have a similar feel to it. __28.__Who is your hero of fiction? Katherine from Newsies. The movie-musical is based on actual events of the 1899 newspaper strike that began in New York. The main reason for the strike was due to newsboys not getting a full refund on unsold papers. Katherine wanted to be a journalist when there were little to no women in the field and was born into the upper class of New York. Her father, Joseph, was the publisher of the World newspaper and wanted Katherine to avoid being involved with the strike. Eventually, she received recognition as a journalist and betrayed her father by helping the newsies win the strike. __29.__Which historical figure do you most identify with? I don’t really identify with them, but I think Katherine Johnson’s story is very inspiring. I watched a movie called Hidden Figures, a biography of her work as one of NASA’s African-American female mathematicians during the Space Race. She overcame racism and gender discrimination during the movie and in real life in order for the Friendship 7 space capsule, commanded by John Glenn, to land safely back to Earth. __30.__Who are your heroes in real life? Random people who do acts of kindness to others and get on TV unexpectedly. They don’t expect anything and just do it because they want to. __31.__What are your favorite names? I don’t have a particular group of names. I guess names with a unique spelling, but a common nickname or unique names that have meaning. I don’t like names that are too common because you could find more than one person with the same name as you in a crowd of thousands. I also don’t like common names that have an infinite number of nicknames that can be spelled differently. Short story: I once had five girls in my high school named “Madison”, none of them had blood relations to each other, and they all had different spellings of the nickname “Maddie”. __32.__What is it that you most dislike? I have a burning hatred towards raw onions. I’ve tried them, but it's either a hatred towards their texture or taste, I can’t tell. __33.__What is your greatest regret? I saw a former student that graduated from my high school. They were my student-teacher when I was in middle school. I saw them after my high school’s Spring music concert, and wanted to talk to them. I never did. __34.__How would you like to die? Drowning. I’ve been in the water since I was four years old. To me, it’s peaceful to just let yourself slowly fall into something that takes time to warm up. __35.__What is your motto? Expect the unexpected. No matter how many times you plan your life, it’s always throwing curve balls. |
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