Final Essay

Juston Dea
Period 2
1/19/10


I wrote weekly blog posts this semester in my English class to help develop and improve my writing skills. Most of the topics I wrote about were by my own selection, while some were assigned to me by Mr. Sutherland. In some cases, I chose past SAT questions in order to prepare myself for the actual test coming up in my junior year. The ideas for my topics basically were inspired by personal experiences, by events that happened to me which I thought meant something to me, including current events happening in the world that everyone was talking about. In each blog, the topics gave me a chance to express how I felt emotionally, how happy, sad, angry, disappointed, and reflective. My least favorite, yet favorite blog piece is titled, Adversity, written right after the winter break, which I will go into more detail.

I usually write about topics that either are events that happen to me or to others. Most of the time, it’s about something that recently happened to me or something that I might have read in a newspaper and I can relate to because I’ve been in the same situation before. Some blog posts that have to do with my personal experiences are Adversity, Hawaii, My High School Baseball Career, and Is there another explanation or another point of view? I like to write about my personal experiences because it gives me a chance to express my feelings about events that affects my emotions either strongly positively or negatively. The blog post on Adversity explained how I dealt with life when it gets rough and expressed my frustrations about a situation during winter break. Hawaii was written after a family vacation as a graduation present for my sister and I; she from High School and me from Middle School. Hawaii was a truly positive experience. It was my first time to Hawaii and I got the chance to visit, observe, and try new things on four islands. It was also the first time I had ever gone on a cruise ship. I forgot to write something in my blog post that was extremely sad but meant a lot to me. While my family and I were on the island of Oahu, we visited Pearl Harbor. When I first got there, I thought that we were just going to see a sunken ship like the Titanic. But after looking at all the artifacts and reading all the information in the memorial, it was hard to believe that I was standing over 1,102 of the 1,177 sailors that died during the tragic attack. My High School Baseball Career was a reflection on the NCS game that we lost last year against Clayton Valley. I explained my disappointment and failures in the game. “This was the worst thing that has ever happened to me in my whole life. The pitcher picked me off. Even though I thought I was safe, I went back into the dug-out and I felt so terrible that I just sat the very end of the bench embarrassed and pissed off.” When I wrote, Is there another explanation or another point of view?, I was practicing for my SAT essay writing that I used a lot of my personal experiences. “As a basketball player, it is important for me to have many options and see the whole court.” I talked about how there will always be another point of view because everyone doesn’t think the same way. I included my basketball skills in describing the ways that I think.

I sometimes write about current events because they are important to me and I want to share my feelings toward the event to others. Also I write about them so I can keep track of the events so I can look back and remember them. The events I write about are very important to me whether it may be music, sports, or world problems. I wrote three blog posts on current events and each one has its own significance. I shared my thoughts about the Kanye West Controversy with Taylor Swift because I love music and I think what West did was extremely rude and unnecessary. “…it’s especially rude in this case because it is her very first VMA award and he just ruined her moment.” To me, global warming is a very big issue in the world today so I decided to write about it in one of my blog post. I wrote all the facts and details that cause global warming and included some suggestions that we as people can do to prevent it and hopefully I can be part of the solution in the future. I believe that if we just stop polluting the air, global warming would not be such a big problem. “The main reason why the world is getting so hot is because of the amount of greenhouse gasses we (as in everyone in the world) give off into the atmosphere.”

My favorite and least favorite blog post was a recent one about adversity. I decided to write about adversity because at the time, I had just experienced a stressful situation and I believe that I handled it very well. In my blog, I didn’t include all the details because I wrote it the day when the problem was solved and I expressed my feelings in an open manner rather than personal. Now, I am going to tell the story behind my blog post. Over the winter break, I was wrongly suspended from a basketball game for actions that didn’t warrant a suspension. The coach quit on the team, the players all knew it and were upset, but the coach put the blame on me by saying that I quit on the team and wasn’t acting like a Captain should. Also, the way that the suspension was carried out was unprofessional, cruel, and personal which caused my parents to pull me off the team. They later had several meetings with the heads of the program to discuss whether or not I would return to the team. As I said in my blog post, “In some cases, adversity may lead to sacrificing the thing you love most.” Currently, I am back on the team, some of the administration has apologized for their actions, and I feel that I have become a stronger person by not allowing the childish behavior of adults to influence me. “But if you quit and give up, you're not giving yourself a chance to mature and grow up.” I realized that adults, teachers, and coaches can make mistakes too, but that doesn’t give them the right to try and hide or shove it under the rug so other students won’t see them in a different light. Unfortunately, in this situation, the adults didn’t want to be held accountable for their actions. I have lost a lot of faith in some of the teachers and administrators here at Alameda High School because of my suspension during the winter break. I used an admiring quote from the movie “Rocky Balboa” as my closing statement on my blog post to show that I got knocked down, but I wasn’t knocked out. “It's not how hard you get hit. It's how hard you keep going after you get hit.”

The ideas for the blogs I wrote this semester were inspired by my personal experiences, events that I felt were important to me and would affect my future, and situations where my emotions ran high or low. I wanted to write about topics that made me feel happy, sad, angry, disappointed, and reflective. I also, picked Adversity, as my least favorite, yet favorite blog piece. I experienced a lot of stress and anger during the winter break, but I believe I have come out of it a better person. I want to close with a quote from the movie, “Invictus”…

“I am (learning to be) the Master of my Fate…I am the Captain of my Soul”