Assignment 10 - Benjamin Givens

I sit next to Gus, and when he is around no one is safe. He has a very large positive influence on the expectations for staying closely grounded to reality. He has a way of looking at any situation and finding the humor and deprecating joke in it. Whenever you make a mistake, its not that he will be mean about it, but that he makes you feel as though you really can do better, and that the barrier to success is not a magical force from the heavens or luck, but an obvious and clear solution: work at it. He manages to do this all while always being sarcastic and funny. Part of the way he pulls this off is not by being infallible, but by being brilliant and calculating. It is amazing to see him instantly pull up a math answer after being given a word problem or quickly memorize a list of authors and works. He has natural talent, but more than that he is willing to work to do something he wants to do better. Whether that is playing a game or doing school work. So I say that no one is safe around Gus, not as a commentary about physical safety or some sort of threat, but saying that he has an influence around people that makes them want to work harder, to reach his level of understanding, to have his work ethic.