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Favorite Place

 -I used the favorite place prompt -I'm a little under 650, suggestions on things to elaborate would be great My dad is a very much a nature-lover type, and because of that, many of our trips are to various state parks or other natural attractions. Because of that, natural-type areas are my favorite places to visit. If I were to choose one, it would be Madeline Island in Wisconsin. Madeline Island is a ten-mile-long piece of land in a collection of about twelve islands just off the coast of Lake Superior on the north side of Wisconsin. Similarly to a lot of other more nature-themed vacation spots, it's not extremely popular-- to get to the island, you have to get on a ferry boat. My family first discovered the park when I was around a year old. As the story goes, my family was effectively homeless for a week or two when transitioning from an apartment in Urbana to a house in St. Joe, and we needed somewhere to stay in that time. So, my dad took advantage of this ...
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Hometown

I'm a little below the word count, so if there is anything I could expand on tell me Prompt I used: What marketing slogan would you use for your hometown? "Boring, but safe and athletic" is my hometown in a nutshell. St. Joseph, Illinois isn't all that interesting, and I think the common perception from outside isn't totally accurate. When I've talked about my hometown with my friends at Uni, there are two ideas that are inevitably brought up. To begin with, a lot of people have no idea where St. Joe is, despite it being less than miles away from Urbana. You'll pass it anytime you hop on I-74 and head east. But when I tell people it's a town ten miles away, the logical conclusion is that its a rural farm village in the middle of nowhere. This isn't accurate at all in the case of St. Joe, however. While it is a town completely separated from Champaign-Urbana, its more like a suburb than anything else. A very large part of the residents ar...
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Without

This is very much a work in progress. If I could get suggestions on organization, focus, and things to add that would be great.      Much of my free time these days is used on various electronics, whether it’s my laptop, phone, or desktop computer at home. Whenever I’m bored, I’ll just turn one of them on and watch YouTube, play games, or just browse the web. While this does take up a lot of my time, I could certainly live without it, and I know that it would improve my life too.     Back when I was younger, browsing the web or were very fun to me. I was first exposed to the internet through school computer games time back in kindergarten or first grade. The two websites or games that I remember the most are “Funbrain” and “Poptropica”. Us grade-schoolers had a very limited amount of time to play them during these school periods, so it made those short periods all that more important. Back at home, it was the same. My mom was quite strict on my i...
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Happiness and Soccer Cleats

I used the "can money buy you happiness" prompt (obviously) I'm 50 words short of 650, so I'd like to know what paerts I could elaborate on. The last part might also be quite confusing to read, if you have any suggestions for that. Can money buy you happiness? Well, sort of. In my experience, purchasing or receiving materialistic things only makes me happy given certain conditions. The best example of this is with my long interest in soccer cleats. For a long while now, I’ve been pretty obsessed with soccer cleats. This interest of mine started back around fifth grade. Previously, most kids had very cheap soccer shoes, as they were very young and they probably didn’t care either. However, that seemed to change quite abrupt once fifth grade hit, and I recall seeing that many of my teammates had colorful, cool-looking shoes. I became quite jealous, and asked my parents if they could get me a pair of my own. However, they refused, saying it was too expensi...
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The Land

This is another response to the "objects that tell the story of your life" prompt. I think there's some wordiness or confusing stuff here, so if you have any specific examples or tips on how to fix it, that would be great. I also want to know what sentences/sections aren't particularly important- I'd like to add some more specific memories but I'm over the word count by a *lot* currently. Sometime back when I was around the age of  9 or 10, my family purchased a new vehicle. I remember opening the shades in my living room and seeing the new Ford pickup truck in its dull golden glory for the first time. I was very excited, especially since I knew what it was for. Today, this truck represents a large part of my childhood that I look on happily. A little before this happened, I recall seeing a bag of dirt on my dad's office room. Yeah, just a bag of dirt. Young me was completely confused, and even more confused when my dad heated up the dirt in the oven...
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The Backyard

The prompt I responded to is: What objects tell the story of your life? Realized after I finished that a backyard isn't really an object, but I discussed some others so hopefully it's fine. Almost three years ago, my family moved from a small three-bedroom house to a significantly larger one. We've been happy the past three years, appreciating how much space we had compared to the older house. However, the old house had one thing that made it superior to the new house- a large backyard. It was in this backyard that I started many hobbies and activities that I continue to enjoy today. Bike riding is an activity I think I'm quite good at now, but it started with a struggle. My dad doesn't believe in training wheels, and it was because of this that I learned how to ride my bike in my backyard. For about a week straight during the summer after kindergarten, I was basically forced to learn how to ride my bike. I would put my feet on the pedals, and my dad would p...
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