A personal interest that I have would have to be working with computers and building computers. The process of making a computer is quite advanced, but there is an easy way to explain it especially to a 10-year-old. 

I learned to begin building computers from watching many youtube videos which made it much easier, as I once also had no idea what I was doing. I found it quite interesting that someone could themselves make a system that was available pre-made for convenience, but there was a way to customize it to our own needs. Building computers is not as affordable as it should be, and I think it can serve as a gateway for young kids interested in engineering and it is enjoyable. 

There are many parts to the computer, I would explain it as a human body to make it easier to understand. The brain of the computer can be known as the processor which serves to give the rest of the computer information that is needed to do its tasks. The body of the computer is known as the motherboard, this part houses all of the components and allows them all to work in unison. The computer obviously needs to be powered, so something known as the power supply has the job to make sure that the rest of the system works and does not fail. If one part is not working, the rest of the system has trouble. The enjoyment of seeing something that can take hours to assemble working, makes all the time spent worth it in the end. 

Mermin says that writing is able to help us think, and this is true because while I was even writing this response, I felt that writing the things that I would do helped in explaining my reasoning in much better detail. Through research, when I began to write about topics I have never heard about, I understood the topic after I began to write down my ideas and thoughts instead of going off a lack of information. 

Writing sometimes may seem tedious, but Mermin has a point in how he explains how he thinks of writing and how beneficial it can be in our thought process as both writers and members of an audience for many pieces of writing that we may come across as scholars. 

One example that I have that I can explain how writing can be a tool for thinking would have to be when I was writing multiple papers in my high school Physics class. In this course, we heavily focused on lab reports, and when I was confused about a topic, the teacher gave us writings about the lab and I always relied on them to gain a better understanding of the topic. Those writings helped me think and at times writing may seem tedious, but I am glad at how effective it could be. Whether it is reflections, essays, lab reports, and research papers, all of them have helped me think in different ways that I would not have been able to process without the vast amount of writing.