Matthew Valdez: Ace Sushi Chef

My most enjoyable job was when I was hired at a Japanese restaurant called Suruki's. I had one job and one job only, to make sushi. Some other responsibilities I had were to wash dishes and fill the fish tub with ice. Besides that, making sushi was all I had to concentrate on. What made the job enjoyable was that lots of my friends worked there and Chris Aguda from LCO was the manager that hired me so I was able to have a really flexible schedule. Fun Fact: I was actually hired to replace Andrew DeMesa after he left. So yeah anyway. We had tons of downtime in the morning and after lunch. All we did was talk and listen to Japanese electro music and anime songs. The only thing that wasn't that great was the owner of the restaurant. He was really mean and by far the worst manager I ever had. I believe that the experiences I had at this job will help me at my internship because I would be able to deal with mean managers. The lessons I learned were how to have patience with an extremely rude temperamental manager. This is a great lesson I learned because angry managers are ubiquitous.

The worst job I ever had was my first job at Target.  My job was to take items and put them in their specific aisles in their proper place.  I also had to fix up the aisles and make all the items look all clean and tidy.  I was really fast at this job and my managers liked that.  Because of this, they put me in the toy's section during the Christmas season.  I hated it.  It was seriously like cleaning your room and having people come in and mess everything up.   What I can take from this job is patience to push through a very mundane task.

nfb

Freakonomics is about not believing conventional wisdom and thinking of things from a different point of view. The author probably wrote this book to show what economics will be like if applied to controversial topics. The message trying to be conveyed is again, to think of things from a different point of view and not believing conventional wisdom. There were lots of passages that left different impressions on me. I was mostly shocked about how much money a drug dealer makes and how it's compared to someone trying to become a major league baseball player. The chapter that inspired the richest discussion in my group was the chapter about names and parenting. We discussed what makes a good parent and the fine line between being a tough parent and a friend to your child. After the reading, I believe that my interest has been piqued. I'm starting to think of things in a different light. The book wasnt really written in a way where it was easily enjoyable. I enjoyed the author's witty sense of writing, but I didnt like how he skipped topics around so much. Also there were a ton of stats and facts that you would tend to get kind of lost. I would recommend this book to anyone that actually enjoys reading.

Take a look, it's in a book

Reading has been super easy for me so far but it hasn't been for some other people.  Get ready for some venting.  It's kind of annoying when people are always like "Man why we gotta read so much!?  This is too much to read in one week and blah blah blah blah".  Seriously, were just reading one chapter a week.  It's really not that hard.   Do people really need some incentives just to read a chapter in a book?  I mean, it would behoove everyone if they read something that isn't a Facebook post or a text message.

 What I usually do is just read the book when I'm on my way to Year Up or whenever I have nothing else to do, and before I know it, I'm already done with the chapter.  I also make sure not to read in my bed because I would end up falling asleep.  Another tip is to not read when you're sitting in front of a computer.  You would end up going on Tumblr or Facebook instead of reading.   If you're watching TV, you can read during every commercial...be warned though, if you do this you might not get anything out of the reading.  But yeah, even if you really don't feel like reading, just take an hour out of your day just to read the chapter and really understand it.  Even if you're a slow reader, you should be able to finish a chapter in about 3 or 4 hours.  That's about what...like an hour out of 3 or 4 days?  Some annotation advice would be to circle or highlight any word, phrase, or a part of the reading that sticks out to you. You could also mark any parts that are confusing to you so you could talk about it in the book discussions.

Um, so for anyone reading the book, to help you understand it more, try and relate it to you.  I know that with the way Freakonomics is written, it jumps around a lot and you could get lost.  But think of it as a confusing movie that only makes sense at the end.  It's kind of like Inception or the Saw movies. Everything always connects at the end. That's really how each chapter is written.  You have to get through the whole chapter to understand what the authors are talking about.  So yeah, dont be discouraged if you have no idea what they're trying to say. Just stick to it until you finish and the author makes his final point.  Then you'll see how all that jumping around ties together in the end.  You'll be like "Ohhhhh that is so cray cray! Freakonomics is my new favorite book!". 


Take a look, it's in a book. A reading rainbow.