"We both kind of had the same idea to keep our eyes open" Hello, my name is Jad Assaf. I am in the undergraduate studies class related to MI Diaries, and this is going to be my MI diary for my profile. I guess I should start off with a story that could kind of describe a little bit about myself and just who I am as a person. So, I'll go with the recent story. Recently, I went with six of my friends to Japan for a trip, you know something we've been planning since my freshman year of high school and it was after the end of senior year so it was almost like a graduation trip we've been playing for a very long time, and I'll tell you about a specific story where me and one of my closest friends, who I've been friends with for I couldn't even tell you how long I'm since I was a child, we were in the major area Shibuya Crossing and we're kind of just in that area walking around and my friend for some reason, had a strange desire to go to Taco Bell in Japan. Me, being the supportive friend I am. I decided to tag along with him and go with him to Taco Bell. So, we go out to a bit of a mall-ish area where there's a food court, and there's a Taco Bell; we go in there, and he gets his meal, and I was interested in trying Taco Bell for myself there in Japan, but I was really feeling up to it I just had a meal, so blah, blah, blah. You know, we go, we go sit down in the food court and we're just sitting there, we're just talking, and he's loving the food, you know, good for him, things were looking up, but what happened afterwards was as we were sitting in this food court, two older ladies came next to us and started speaking to us in English, and if, if you've ever been to Japan, you would know that that's a pretty strange occurrence because virtually no one in Japan speaks English. It's a very rare occurrence to come across people that do. So, when they started speaking English to us, we kind of just rolled with it because we wanted to speak to Japanese locals, you know?…

"Where the heck did the ball go?" Over the last couple years, there's been a lot of new things that I've been up to. One of those things has been golf. I've been doing a lot of golfing with my friends. I got into it really like last year I would go with them. I was pretty terrible, to be honest, I was really bad. I would use their clubs, and I would like hit every single ball into the woods or like the ball would go backwards sometimes. Yeah, Backwards. Like, I don't even know how that happens, you know, hitting the ball backwards but that's what I did. This year. I really wanted to get into it though. I bought my own bag and own clubs, and I started practicing a bunch, and I'm still pretty, pretty darn bad at it. But I, I think I found a good joy in it. There's a lot of competitiveness that I like in it. It's, It can be relaxing. It can also be very frustrating, but I think it's something that I'm over the next couple years I'm gonna come to really enjoy and hopefully get better at. Funny story from this summer. I was a driving, right, driving the ball and just smacked it straight into a tree. I was like, where'd the ball go? Where's the, where the heck did the ball go? It turns out I somehow lodged the golf ball into the tree, I've, never seen that happen before but it was pretty silly. But yeah, I think. I'm gonna really enjoy playing this sport especially with my friends, you know, growing together, and out of the small town that I'm from, being able to continue playing the sport with them over the next years is gonna be something special.

"It scurries its little self down the drain" So, I had a rather unfortunate experience with a centipede when I was about like six, seven years old. Probably like fourth grade, I don't know. Whatever age fourth grade is. And I'm like, I'm in the bathroom. I'm brushing my teeth, like any normal -- I go, I fill up, like, my little cup with the water in the sink. I fill it up. I go to take a drink. I feel something on my -- I feel something like on my lips, and I drop the cup, and there's a centipede in the sink. There's a centipede in the sink. It scurries its little self down the drain, and I'm freaking out, I'm screaming. I'm -- and, to this day, I am terrified of centipedes. If I see a centipede, I'll jump on the couch. I'll run away. I'll hide. Because it genuinely traumatized me because I almost ate a centipede. And, yeah, to this day, I can't -- I can't stand them. They terrify the crap out of me.

"I was doing something I love so much that it didn't really feel like work anymore" So my question is, describe a time that you felt you truly grew into your role on a team and discovered something new about yourself as a result. So in high school, I was part of my school's radio station. And I was naturally a pretty shy and quiet person, and I don't really enjoy talking in front of other people. So I found the first year pretty challenging because of that. You know, just having to talk in front of a microphone without other people -- in front of a lot of other people that would be listening. However, I had listened to the station a little bit prior to joining, especially in middle school when covid hit. And around this time, this was when groups like BTS and Blackpink, just a lot of K-pop groups were really starting to emerge in the K-pop industry. And growing up as a Korean-American, I found it really interesting that the radio station had a separate specialty show where one of the staff members would play music in this genre and then talk about it. And so naturally I became really interested in this and I even audi- this led me to audition to the station during my sophomore year, after spending a virtual year -- after spending my freshman year virtually. And about halfway through this year, I decided to take action, so I started talking with one of the other staff members and together, we were able to create a K-pop specialty show after the old host graduated. And it was really fun because I was doing something I love so much that it didn't really feel like work anymore. And I was glad that I was able to share my story and the stories of people in this industry, and hopefully people that were listening would be able to take something valuable from these things that I was sharing. And I started off with reading a script, just because I was pretty afraid to make mistakes the first times around. But gradually, I started going off and just talking on the spot, which built a lot of my confidence and pride in my speaking abilities and growth. And I think that this experience now as a college student really shaped who I am…

"We were confused and we're like, 'What's happening?' And then the vehicle just shut off." Okay, so this was probably a year ago. My family and I like to go to Florida every year. Sometimes we go in different locations, but this year we were going to Marco Island. And this year we finally like flew. Because before then we would usually like drive a really, really long time to get there. And we flew, we got out at the Florida airport, I can't remember where it was, but wasn't exactly at Marco Island. It was like a hour, hour and a half drive there. And we had a rental car. So, you know, that was convenient. Got in the rental car, start driving. And like, relevant for the story, those hybrid cars that like are both electric and gas powered, that like kind of feed off each other -- which like, we did that once before, when we rented a car another time. And you know, we liked it, so we did it again this year. And I have three sisters, you know, my dad and my mom, we were all packed in the car. And it was a really long drive. And we were like in Naples, Florida area. And we just got off the highway, we were coming to a light, and all of a sudden it just said, "Stop car, vehicle's turning off." And we were confused and we're like, "What's happening?" And then the vehicle just shut off. Luckily we were at the light, but like we couldn't move. We couldn't -- like we turned it off, turned it on. Wouldn't start up. And like, eventually we had these people, like construction workers nearby, help us push it off the road. Like we put in neutral. And that was just the start of it all. Because, like, we started calling the tech support like, you know, the insurance company for the rental car. We were like, "Hey, our car broke down." Like, "Just randomly happened." And they were like, giving pretty bad advice. They're like, "Have you tried turning on and off again?" It's like, "Yes." They're like, "Okay, well, you're gonna have to charge it." It's like, "Well, no, you don't actually," but he just like -- they're like, "Oh, this is probably the problem." But it wasn't. It was like something internal, probably…

"I taught her a game called Spit" A while back ago, I've been heavily influenced by my science teacher, back in freshman year of high school. I was in her biology class and I had a really hard time learning in class. I was just bad at biology and like understanding the materials, but she was a fantastic teacher and she was really nice, too. She helped me a lot when I asked her questions and I would stay behind after school to get more help from her to understand the content material. And she became like, kind of a great friend for me in high school. After school, because I'm a little bit of a nerd, I would play cards with her, and I taught her a game called Spit, which is very fast-paced and very fun to play with her. But, yeah, she was just an amazing teacher and I ended up doing extremely well in that class. And the next year, I took chemistry with a different teacher and when I didn't understand things in chemistry, I would go to her and ask her questions and she would explain it to me. And she also wanted to be a chemistry teacher and start a chemistry YouTube channel, so I knew I could rely on her for help. And now here I am four years later, a freshman in high school with a major and biochemistry and molecular biology. Because now I understand the content in biology and chemistry and that's like one of my strong, strongest majors, is in the sciences, in part because of her. But yeah, I really appreciate her for doing everything she did to help me out. And she's part of the reason I made it this far in school.

"It did derail on me three times this summer" So, I recently just moved into my freshman year dorm, here at Michigan State University. And I've had a lot of time, a lot more than I thought, just to think about a lot of different things. One thing that I've thought about are things that I'm grateful for, and something that I'm grateful for is all of these experiences I've had over the past 18 years. That's how old I am. And one experience in particular was actually my job this summer. I feel like it's not very common to hear about my job, but I was actually an iron mine tour guide. So there's this place in the U.P., that's where I'm from, it's called The Iron Mountain Iron Mine, and I actually tour guided there. So, what I would do, I would introduce myself. Then I would introduce a bunch of these machines that the miners used to use, back when they were mining. And then we would actually go into a iron mine on this little like train cart thing. We could hold to like 30 people, but it did derail on me three times this summer. And ironically it was all in the same week and it was my last week, so. They're probably like, "Oh, it's time for you to go." But I got to meet so many new people, like from around the world. I'm pretty sure I hit all 50 states because when I started like introducing myself I'm like, "So, where's everybody from?" And there's people from Wyoming, from Texas, Florida, Hawaii, Alaska. So [I just] got to experience all of that and I think it's really cool how one thing can bring so many people together, especially in a place that's not very heard of. Like the U.P., you obviously hear of the Mackinaw Island Bridge. They're like, "Oh, what's even up there? Does anybody even live up there?" Yes, there are people that live up there. No, we are not part of Wisconsin. And no, we are not a part of Canada, either. So yeah, I just wanted to share that. I think it was a very cool experience that I wouldn't trade for the world.

"I've never clicked so easily so fast and that effortlessly with anyone else up until this point, so I knew that something special was going to come out of this" I am currently feeling extra grateful about my best friend, so I'm going to tell the story on how we met. I was in 8th grade, and me and her were both a part of a year-round swim club, outside of where we would swim at our schools, that I would practice at multiple times a week. At this one particular practice, there weren't a lot of people swimming, and I was swimming in a lane with one other person who I had been swimming with for a really long time, but my soon-to-be best friend was swimming in the lane right next to me. We just got done with a set, and the next set that we were doing was a kicking set. Any swimmer gets excited about a kicking set, because there's a chance that the coach will let you social kick, which means that you can do the set while talking with your best friends at the same time because your head is out of the water while you're kicking with a kick board. So the coach said that we could social kick. I look over and see that she's alone in the lane next to me. She looked to be around my age, and so I asked her if she wanted to join my lane and kick with me. And she said that she would, and she came into my lane. The second we started talking, we had so much in common. On top of everything else, we found out that we were the same age, swam in the same summer league our whole lives, and that she was going to be going to the same high school as me this upcoming year. I've never clicked so easily so fast and that effortlessly with anyone else up until this point, so I knew that something special was going to come out of this. And we figured all of this out in no more than 10 minutes. Ever since then, all of these years later, she has been my best friend. I like to tell this story because even though it happened so many years ago, I can envision what happened like it was yesterday.

"And I remember thinking, 'I'm going to remember this for the rest of my life.'" So I have in abysmal memory. It's not something so terrible to where it has to be diagnosed as a standalone condition. It doesn't make my life unlivable, but it does make it sometimes quite frustrating. It mostly makes it frustrating for the people that I'm having conversations with because I will be quite comfortable, actually, I'll forget a lot of things alone in my own little ignorant bubble, but then my friends — I can't answer simple questions, like, "What did you have to eat today?" or "Yo, you remember what XYZ said last week?" or "during yesterday's lecture?" And it's especially bad when a friend is recounting something that they told me during like, really deep personal conversation, or anything that they deemed important about themselves enough to tell me at some point and they'll be like, "Don't you remember? I told you when my birthday was," or "this dramatic thing that happened when I was a child." And I will have to kind of bite my nails and be like, "I'm so sorry. I don't remember." Because how long can I keep up with this when I don't actually remember, any of the details? It makes me look like a terrible friend, but it's really just my brain arbitrarily sorting all of these memories into important and worth keeping around and unimportant or distressing for some reason, which is why I think I've had trouble studying over the years because memorization is just not my strong suit. But of all the memories that my brain decided to arbitrarily keep around, one of my most vivid memories — vivid and earliest, aside from really, really, really, really young. I was in fourth grade, and I was sitting during story time — it was story time or some classroom announcement, but it was at the teacher's big rocking chair that was at the very back of the classroom, there was a big blue, yellow, red carpet which I think is just a general color combination that's pretty ubiquitous in elementary schools. But I remember sitting on the edge of that carpet, not at all listening to what the teacher was saying, looking up at the tall blue store closet that was positioned at the edge of the carpet to kind of wall off the…