Thomas Finsaas

 Flying Jewels Imitation Piece Final Draft It was adjusting his equipment that got to Shepard. It sounded so stupid, even to himself. He had faced things that by all logic should have impacted him more. He’d woken up in the midst of an attack to learn that he’d been dead for two years. He’d met old friends and comrades, and seen the way the years impacted them. He’d even received an email from his mom , making clear that they needed to talk if he suddenly wasn’t, in fact, dead. Yet, it was his stupid guns that made it set in. He’d been using standard stuff since waking up. Too rushed to make real changes for optimization. If he’d felt faster, stronger…it had just melded into the chaos of battle where instinct reigned. Now though…Now, he’d had the chance to just sit down and do the menial work that followed battle. The changes to that routine suddenly stuck out. He had to make numerous modifications to his trusty Mattock. He’d upped the power to get the satisfying recoil he’d

  I-Search   I-A I am a bit of a history nerd. I find there to be something comforting in the ups and downs that all countries have endured. History proves that everyone goes through hard times, and that such times can be overcome. Some of my love of history comes just from entertainment as well. Alternate history is a topic I find quite enjoyable to explore; a question of how history could have diverged from our own with sometimes a particularly small change. My favorite area to study is no doubt medieval Europe though, typically the High or Late Medieval Period. I will fully admit it’s partly as I was a nerd in high school, and these are the times most characterized by the swords, castles, and knights once would find in fantasy novels. One quickly realizes when studying history though that liking history does not mean you don’t have major blind spots. One shouldn’t be surprised, but humanity has such a wide and deep history that one is inevitably less familiar with certain

  Final Draft             Joining the military and then not making it through Basic is something that most people would try to avoid ever mentioning. It’s a clear and undeniable mark of failure. More than just failing a class or getting fired from a job though, it’s failing at one of the most respected and lauded life choices a person can make in modern times.             Oddly enough, it’s not something I avoid as much as I sometimes feel I should. Possibly because I could at least be proud I went, despite the panic I had been feeling. I also can say that at least no one who hasn’t been there could criticize my failure.             I ultimately ended up at Basic for ten weeks. One can graduate in seven weeks for the Navy, but part of why I failed delayed everything. Three weeks in, I broke my pinkie toe when I fell going down steps in a mock ship during drills. I was cycled out of my current battalion as I needed to go on medical leave. I was sent to a group filled with those pe

Science Fiction Piece