As soon as the image prompts loaded in, I knew that I’d be using the image from Avatar: The Last Airbender. I love this show so much that I went out and bought the entire series on DVD a few years ago, before it went on Netflix, and I’m currently rewatching it for the tenth time with my little sister. Sokka is one of my favorite characters on the show, mainly because his animation is so dynamic. There are a plethora of still shots where his facial expressions are so over-exaggerated, but I think it adds a lot to the character.

I didn’t know from the beginning exactly what I wanted my meme to be about, and I’ve only made a handful of them in the past, so I struggled a bit with the concept. I thought I might play off of the fact that Sokka is a very food-driven character, but I couldn’t come up with anything that I was super happy about. However, the more I looked at his expression, the more I realized it was exactly how I felt in high school when I would stay up until two or three o’clock in the morning to edit a video or finish a slideshow, only to get to school the next day and the teacher would push the assignment out a few days. Under any other circumstances I would have been fine with this development, in fact, I was usually pretty happy because presenting wasn’t my favorite thing to do. The problem I had was that I put so much time and effort into a project that I neglected my body’s need for rest. It also irritated me that many teachers would say something like “After you left yesterday, I decided you might need more time,” meaning that they knew the due date was going to be extended well before class the next day, but they failed to relay that in a timely manner. To me, this is just disrespectful, and I think Sokka’s face showcases the “you have to be kidding” thoughts that would run through my mind whenever something like this would happen.

In regards to how I actually made this meme, Google Slides was the best option for me. I did try out the Meme Generator that was linked in the Digital Creation Toolkit, but there just weren’t enough options to edit the size of the text. I’m pretty familiar with Google Slides anyways, and I knew there was an option to make WordArt in the Insert Menu, so that’s how I inserted the text. It was honestly pretty easy, and once I figured out the best tool for the job, it only took me about 15 minutes or so to make final decisions about word choice and layer the text over the image.

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