Journal Entry 54: Solving Problems

In Hatchet Brian finds himself confronted with a number of serious problems that he has to overcome. He solves many of the problems by calling on something he has learned earlier in life, like when the pilot showed him how to steer the plane, or things his teachers taught him. Have you ever learned something from someone, or from a book, from television, or from a movie and used that knowledge in your own life? Describe how you used previous knowledge to solve a real-life problem.

I can't really think of anything in particular that I learned and then used to solve real-life problems, but I've definitely tried a few funny pranks in some of the books I've read. It's really funny and much more interesting to see how people really react to pranks (gosh, I'm a mean person!). Even though it was fun, I kind of learned that the person (or people) being prank'd might not find it as amusing as I do... Some other things that are really useful I learned from books (not textbooks) are: how to deal with peer pressure (really useful) and how to ignore people like boys and hateful "not-very-smart" people. I definitely don't find math useful. I mean, why would we need to learn algebra and all those complicated equations when really, in real life, all we need to know is basic adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing? After all, we're just kids, we're not going to fix computers or invent a time machine! Seriously, I have nothing against math, personally, I think it's awesome and brings up my grades, but I just don't see how it can be useful. English is pretty useful though. Even though I probably won't grow up to be a writer, I can still use really deep and hard words to intimidate people or insult them (ha ha!). Science is quite useful too. It taught me that washing my hands with just water will make my hands dirtier than if I don't wash is at all. So, now I'd either use soap or not wash at all (just kidding, only use soap to wash.). Even though the things we learn may seem insignificant and useless to us now, I think it will definitely be handy in the future, at least I hope so... :)