Determination

This past weekend, my field hockey team won the state tournament.  It was one of the most amazing moments of my life, and very rewarding.  All summer and fall, each one of my teammates and I had spent countless hours practicing and working out.  Regular season started the end of August, and that is when things really started kicking into gear.  We came into the season with great expectations, having won state the previous year, against our biggest rival, Lake Forest.  Last year, New Trier had lost to Lake Forest twice in regular season, but beat Lake Forest in the game that really mattered: state.

We were a strong team, and ended our regular season 12-1-1 (Wins-Loses-Ties), which unfortunately wasn’t as good as Lake Forest’s 12-0-1 (we tied to them 0-0 the first game, and lost to them 3-1 in the second game).  So as soon as playoffs came around, we were seeded number two, and Lake Forest, of course, number one.  We were all so determined to beat Lake Forest, and to ruin their “perfect season” that they had going into the tournament (with no loses). 

And on Saturday we proved to Lake Forest our passion, drive, and capability, beating them 2-0, and winning the state title once again.  It was not necessarily that we had better stick skills, (we certainly didn’t in the regular season, but by playoffs we might have), but more that we had the determination and passion.  We all became really close this fall, and were very motivated.  It goes to show that the “underdog” can win, and as cheesy it sounds, it mostly takes perseverance and passion.  Yes, we still had to be in shape and have good stick skills, but it took the togetherness of the team and the determination to become state champions. 

Meta-Post

Over the past eight weeks, I have grown as a blogger.  Blog writing was a new concept for me this year, a task that I had never been expected to do before.  When we first were assigned to “blog”, I have to admit I was very nervous and not too thrilled.  I was worried I wouldn’t pick the “right" topic or say the “right” words.  Never before had my writing been so widely exposed, so I felt self conscious at first putting my opinion out there, and I spent many hours just writing the first few posts.  And it wasn’t that it was hard to write, but more that I was worried what people would think.

Looking back at my posts thus far, I have definitely seen changes in format.  My first posts were written more in the format of a paper, rather than a blog. They were less provocative and left nothing for the reader to grab onto, and no easy way to respond.  For example, in my I Don’t Go to Colgate…post, I concluded with the following:

“Artifacts do not tell the whole story.  Therefore research, collaboration, and corroboration are key steps that must be taken before any conclusions can be drawn.  I mean, how do we as individuals have a right to make assumptions based only on materialistic items?”

This was merely rhetorical question, and left the reader with nothing to really respond to.  What I have started to do, and still need to work on, is to make my posts more conversational, more open-ended (as opposed to a rhetorical question).  In my post A Call to Action: Understand Our Past to Correct Our Future, I gave my interpretation of George Orwell’s quote. 

"He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future."

I took the key word “controls” to mean “understands” and gave my personal interpretation.  This allowed others to comment on what “controls” meant to him or her. Another technique I have used to create a statement or argument that extends the conversation is to end it with a question.  However, I have found this to be a risky technique because it sometimes seems like the author is trying to hard to get an argument out of the readers, instead of allowing it to come more naturally.  Nevertheless, in my The Social Network post, I found asking a few questions at the end beneficial because the questions went along with the post and offered people a chance to comment on their thoughts on social networking (i.e. “facebooking”). 

In hindsight, I have noticed that a common theme I have explored is interpretation.  I mentioned that a person cannot just make interpretations and assumptions about someone solely based on what they see in my I Don’t  Go to Colgate… post.  I wrote that textbook authors choose how they interpret and narrate a historical event in Are We Seeing the Whole Story?  Or Just the American Version?  I wrote about how people can have many different interpretations on an event, based on diction in my “British Petroleum? Or “Anything-but-American” Petroleum?  In the future, I hope to widen my topic choices in my blog in order to create a greater variety.

As first quarter is ending, I already feel like I have experienced growth as a writer.  I now feel more comfortable voicing my opinion and allowing others to read what I have to say.  However, I still have a lot to work on; such as creating more concise and to-the-point posts, extending the conversation, and varying my topic choice.  Nevertheless, now I don’t dread blogging because it motivates me to dig deeper on current events and make connections with things we talked about in class.

*Please read The Social Network*

A Call to Action: Understand Our Past to Correct Our Future

In class last week, both Mr. O’Connor and Mr. Bolos mentioned George Orwell’s quote from his the book, Nineteen Eighty-Four:

"He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future."

I interpreted this quote as Orwell’s desire for us all to study history.  In my opinion, when he uses the word “controls”, he means “understands.”  I took this quote to mean that those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.  Therefore, a person who “understands” the mistakes and successes from the past will “understand” what to do for the future.  Whereas a person who is only focusing on the present is ignoring the lessons from the past.  Many times we are told to “live in the moment”.  However, in my belief, Orwell is saying that if all you do is live in the present, you are risking being narrow-minded and oblivious.

Orwell says that we all must be knowledgeable about the past in order to make the best decisions in the present that will best impact the future.

10.10.10

Over the weekend, I watched my mom run the Chicago Marathon.  18 weeks of training and it all comes down to one day.  While more than 45,000 people from all over the world registered for the race, only around 38,000 actually started the race, and just over 36,000 finished.  But do these numbers really matter?

In class last week we talked about how numbers drive people to make comparisons with one another.  We live in a very competitive society where people are constantly focused on how their numbers stack up to other peoples'.  How many cars?  How many shoes?  What are your grades?  What did you get on the ACT?  In our every day lives, especially those of high school students, numbers play a huge role.

Grades alone can’t really show the extent of one’s knowledge, just as marathon times don’t tell the whole story.  Yet, we still obsess over the numbers.  Even my grandpa who at 79-years-old still runs marathons, records daily in his training log how many miles he ran, and how fast. 

After the race, many people ask, “what was your time?”  Many people look up the times of relatives and friends online as well.  But is it really about that?  Instead shouldn’t we celebrate that the runner had the courage to begin, the determination to stick with it, and strength and endurance to finish?  Running 26.2 miles is an accomplishment itself, no matter how fast you do it.

**I find it kind of ironic that I used so many numbers in this article about the unimportance of numbers.  Clearly, I am my grandfather’s granddaughter and a victim of society…

The Social Network

This weekend, I saw the movie The Social Network.  For those of you who don’t know, the movie is about how Facebook was created by Harvard undergrad Mark Zuckerberg with help from a few others (and financial help from his classmate Eduardo Saverin).  I highly recommend seeing this movie because it really makes you realize how Facebook changed our social interactions and made it much easier to communicate and be up-to-date with “friends” from across the world.  Peter Travers of Rolling Stone said, “The movie of the year that also brilliantly defines the decade.”  Travers is right; this past decade will definitely be remembered for this network (created in February 2004) that allows us to easily connect with others.

“Connectedness” is a topic we have been discussing in AIS this year with our oral history project.  In our project, we explored the ways people define their society and the degree to which people feel satisfied with their society.  This social network, known as Facebook, immensely changed how people can connect with one another.  It is easy to access information about “friends” and is a way to online communicate with others any time of day.  For those of you who are Facebook users, how has social networking changed your interactions with others?  Has it made you feel more connected to others?  Or, paradoxically, do you feel less connected because you are communicating behind a screen instead of in person?