Nabeeha Qadri: Which eating utensil would you get rid of forever? Random, right? Well, your hosts Peter Lipinsky and Nabeeha Qadri, invite you to come answer this question and why ask random questions? With senior Belle Weng, who recently covered this subject in her senior speech.

Belle Weng: So my speech was based around this hypothetical question of if you had to pick between four utensils, like spoons, forks, knives, and chopsticks, which one would you get rid of forever, like you can’t use it ever again. Partially it was just to pose a silly question but it also to analyze the way people would approach the question or how to be engaged in conversation or look at it from a different perspective

Peter Lipinsky: Weng got the idea for her senior speech pretty recently, she was inspired by a conversation she had with her friends at her lunch table

BW: A week or two before I started writing my speech, Most of our lunch table banter is just spitballing random ideas, so it just came to me one day. I was like, Okay, if you had to get rid of one forever. And watching how that conversation exploded. Because everyone has different opinions, and also, very strong opinions, it was really cool, and I thought it’d be interesting to talk about more.

NQ: It’s fascinating how one simple question sparked a whole debate and lively conversation.

BW: it became the consensus that chopsticks and forks kind of do the same thing, so it really depends on which one you’re more comfortable with. So most of us end up saying chopsticks just like it comes from background and what you’re familiar with,

PL: not knowing what to say, especially when talking to someone you may not know, can be challenging and awkward. But Belle approaches this task by asking random questions. And it’s also a great way to get to know someone

BW: I feel like, as a person, I tend to be pretty spontaneous, so it’s kind of my little way of working my creativity in my day to day life. And also I think it makes a great conversation starter, because you don’t need to know any prior knowledge about someone to pose a question that they’re very familiar with. So it’s a way to see, one, how would they respond? Like, the content that it gives you like a subject to talk about, and then two, the way they approach a question, and the way they come to an answer can be really interesting. Or if you dig deeper, why would you say that you can get some background on someone?

NQ: Another favorite question of Weng’s is, what is your favorite nursery rhyme?

BW: I have a couple other questions that I’ve been asking lately, which I think are pretty fun. I try to mix it up when I can. One of them that I asked pretty much all of my fencing team is, what’s your favorite nursery rhyme, because there’s not really a reason to it. There’s no analytical way to be like, Oh, I love the structure of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. But it’s just like, I don’t know, you get a gut vibe about someone based on what they say. I think it’s kind of fun.

PL: Weng’s senior speech was memorable and had a lasting impact on the audience, even though Weng came up with it fairly recently,

BW: after my speech, which was interesting. A lot of people came up to me and said they get rid of a spoon, which I thought was crazy, because you can’t do what a spoon does with any other utensil. So I was like, that’s an interesting choice, and I wonder why it was so common. I just wanted to write about something I was a little bit passionate about, but I hoped that it would be conveyed in a way that the audience would be bored by it so like something it was written for me, but in a way that would be palatable for everyone.

(Music: Coffee shop stories Lo-Fi)