Assignment 21 - Ben Sanner

I enjoy playing chess. It is something I have played with my dad and grandfather for many years. While I can not play with them I need to find other ways to hone my skills. I have recently began attempting to solve chess puzzles. I started out doing about one per day as they were pretty easy to start out. But more recently I have reached a tougher level of puzzles that require time to think and multiple days to solve. I am currently on a puzzle that will take me many years to complete and I'm not sure where it will lead me but In the end I hope the journey will bring me something. I'm on my own for this puzzle and while others may help me, in the end I must do the final steps. And if you think i'm talking about chess you may be mistaken.

Assignment 20- Ben Sanner

This is my family recipe for making chocolate chip cookies:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees and line baking sheets with parchment paper. Whisk flour and baking soda in a medium bowl.
Melt 10 tablespoons butter in a 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat (I used a stainless steel skillet to easily see when the butter had begun to brown). Continue cooking and swirl pan until butter is dark golden brown and has a nutty aroma (about 1 to 3 minutes). Transfer to a large bowl and add remaining 4 tablespoons butter and stir until completely melted. Browning the butter is a key element of this recipe! It gives the cookies a great depth of flavor.
Add brown sugar, granulated sugar, salt, and vanilla to melted butter and whisk until fully incorporated. Add egg and yolk, and whisk for about another 30 seconds until no sugar lumps remain. Here comes another key step! Let the mixture rest for 3 minutes, then whisk again for 30 seconds. Repeat the rest/whisk cycle two more times (totaling 10.5 minutes from the beginning of the first rest period). Doing this helps the sugar to better dissolve in the butter, helping the cookies to retain moisture during baking yielding soft, chewy cookies. The mixture should be thick, smooth, and shiny at this point.
Stir in flour with rubber spatula, mix until just combined, about 1 minute. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts.
Using 3 tablespoons of dough at a time, roll into balls and place 2 inches apart. I know the dough balls seem huge, but the bigger cookies also help to keep the cookies soft and chewy rather than crispy and dry. Bake one cookie sheet at a time, for 10 to 14 minutes, rotating the sheet halfway through baking. My cookies averaged a baking time of about 12 minutes.

This is word for word what we have in our kitchen.

Assignment 25: Uniquely You – Mulligan (College)

This is a Makeup Blog Post.  If you have a score that is less than a 30/30, this will replace that grade

When I tell my wife I’ve met someone new (a friend – don’t go there) she always asks, “what’s their story?”  She is keenly interested in the who, the capital WHO, a person in that she wants to know their story.  You have a story.  You have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful you believe you are incomplete without telling it

Inspired by Keanu Gomez
Minimum of 150 words.  Due on May 6th @ 11:59 pm

May 6th is the last day to make up blogs 23-25

Assignment 24: The Future

You're done!  - well almost

Your Junior year (nearly) OVER.

Tell us about it.

Successes? Failures? Lessons Learned? Risks taken? Mistakes made? What will you do in the Summer?  What do you want for your Senior year? How do you plan to reach your goals?

Minimum of 150 words - due on Sunday, April 24th at 11:59 pm

May 6th is the last day to make up blogs 23-25

Assignment 22- Sam Clark

Excellent Sheep by William Deresiewicz details the rise of our current, activity/award/experience-collecting college admissions process. An advocate for deep thought, this pièce de résistance ties in nicely with most critiques of modern learning. Excellent Sheep spells out the complaints I’ve had for a long time, but does so with an academic rigor and precision of language unforthcoming. Though not Shakespeare, it exists unpretentiously and honestly.

To relate back to the prompt (as I’ve obviously had trouble doing), my defining experience is less of an experience and more of a continuous internal struggle: whether to live in our out of the System. I want a college which dodges the troubles of Deresiewicz but manages to still impress, being both in and out of the system.  

Suggestions?

Assignment 21- Sam Clark

Perhaps the most important question facing the youth today is whether to live in or out of the System.

But first, definitions.

For our purposes, “the System” refers to the globalized world structure upon which we all rely. Everyone who buys from chain stores, pays taxes, and depends upon corporate agriculture for sustenance exists within this consuming community. In short, all who are not Amish. Existing as part of the System entails a plethora of moral quandaries: funding environment-destroying oil companies, neglecting to cast aside material possessions, prioritizing creature comforts over relieving the suffering of others. An individual (if you can call them that) inside the System lives a normal, if not moral, life.

On the other hand, one who lives outside the system exists morally free, both burdened and unburdened by a lack of possessions. They grow their own food and live peacefully, shunning overt and covert violence.

The only justification for remaining a Systemite is to amass enough power and wealth to change the system itself. Though incredibly difficult to succeed at, such a joust for control is nevertheless the path of least resistance, as greed is the quality most innate. My question, therefore, is whether or not I should feed the beast to change it or sever my ties to starve it.     

Assignment Twenty- Sam Clark

How to have an Existential Crisis

1. Wonder how God could let bad things happen to good people.
2. Remember that God is good, making all His (his?) actions good.
3. Rebut that we are made in the image of God, meaning our morals should roughly correspond to his.
4. Think about this for a little while, then ponder the moral double standard in the Bible.
5. Recall that God is by nature incomprehensible, ergo our confusion over his acts is understandable but unprofitable. We, in short, can’t understand something beyond logic.
6. Dejectedly find that if we cast aside logic we’ll be Scientologists.
7. Try to remember the unfinished calculus homework.
8. Reason that we have proof of illogic (or paradoxes or whatever we’ll call it) because of the what-if machine’s impossibility.
9. Become confused over proof of that which goes against logic.
10. Go down this rabbit hole concerning the boundaries between logic and illogic, ever wondering if a unifying theory exists.
11. Actually remember the unfinished calculus homework.
12. Think that human intelligence is too limited to understand matters of logic and illogic, which by their very definition go against deductive reasoning.
13. Attempt to do calculus homework.
14. Think that human intelligence is too limited to understand illogic of calculus, which by its very definition goes against deductive reasoning.
15. Wonder if Ms. Dewees and God are the same person.
16. Put calculus away.
17. Remember why humanity needs religion.
18. Think that personal encounters with the divine are as good a proof as logic.
19. Check my privilege.
20. Know that the only thing in this world that won’t eat me alive is God.
21. Watch the “This is Water” speech again.
22. Throw away basic debates over universal morality. Turns out you didn’t need them!
23. Read some of the Bible.
24. Believe in God (or is it Ms. Dewees?)