My Presentation.!

45 minutes of talking. Seems like a long time right? Surprisingly, it goes by pretty fast when time is the last thing on your mind. This whole week I've been thinking about what I'm going to do once I get up in front of all those people, and believe me it was a pretty hefty crowd. The only thing that came to mind was why not make this a learning experience for the crowd as well as myself? Almost like a live interview presentation. I would give some information and take in some information to further shape my own understanding of my project. I don't believe it, but it was a bigger success than I had envisioned. The crowd was very interactive and their attention was held by my presentation the entire time. What I really think that went well was my ability to improvise and make relevant usage of Mr. Abrams appearance juxtaposed with my own for a very well thought out example. Also, my usage of humor through out the project was a pretty good idea because it appealed to crowd. If I could change anything about my project, I'd have my questions prepared prior to the project. This would've made everything a whole lot easier. I'd also spend more time on my prezi. It could have came out a lot better, but other than that I feel it was a great way to end the year.

Home Stretch

It's crunch time for high school students everywhere. There's finals, quarterlys, and etc coming up. Seniors especially have it the worst. They're excited because they're finally done and can't wait for the teachers they see everyday to become distant memories. It's what most people tend to call "senioritis." Am I experiencing it? Why yes I am, but this is probably the point in the year that requires my focus the most. It's so hard with track everyday, senior trip in two weeks, and both prom and states being on the same day. Keeping focus is nearly impossible, but that's the life of a high school student. I see it as good time management practice for college. God only knows that it's going to get so much harder from here. This is exactly why I say track is life. In track there are those days where you might have to do 3-4 events in one meet, but you've got to learn to take it one race at a time or else you'll do terribly. High school was a lot like my first event of the day. I did the long jump. Ironically it's a short event like, high school. You expect it to be forever, yet before you know it it's over. I expect college to be a lot like my 2nd event the 110m high hurdles. They scare most but those who overcome this fear are bound to overcome any trial and tribulation to come across in their life.  My 3rd event was the triple jump which symbolizes the period in time where I'm finding out who I am. I'm going to go through different phases like the triple jump until I become the man I was always meant to be. My last event of the day was always the high jump. After every height you can only go up from there. In life I only plan on moving forward and not back tracking.

"Detention"

What's the point of detention. I can probably count on one hand the amount of times I've been written up in my life. Some people are in detention like it's a religion. For someone like me, detention makes want to never be late to school because its so annoying, but to others it must feel like some kind of hang out spot. Have you ever really broke down the reasoning for detention, or wondered if it actually has any meaning or affect to students? I think about the same thing every time I have a detention once in a blue moon. What is this actually doing for me? Maybe when I was younger, my attention span was so short that I squirmed and twirled in my seat so much that I never wanted to do anything bad ever again. Now I feel like it's truly pointless. All I do is sit here for here for 45 minutes and then I'm told I can go home. What's the point of that? It doesn't refine me in any kind of way, and it most definitely isn't going to turn a so called "bad" kid into a good one. They really should come up with an alternative to detention. I'm not saying just let kids do what ever they want, but I am saying they should at least be getting something out of it. I remember my first real detention in middle school. I went to Winslow Middle School and there had to be at least 700 kids there. There were so many kids that we had to get out of school at 1:30 just so there wasn't a traffic jam when the high school let out. My detention was for 2 hours all because of a friend of mine and his girl friend and I some how got involved. They made up us copy down the Declaration of Independence the entire time we were there, and if you didn't write enough, you had to come back the next day and do it all over again. That was by far over the top, but it was something different. After this year I probably won't hear the word detention again until I have kids of my own, so I do hope they come up with something new instead of these medieval forms of torture.

Spring break!

What did I do for spring break? Well, Larry and I had gone on a college visit to Alvernia University in PA. We stayed from Sunday night until Monday evening. Our guide was this short guy who ran track that was no taller than Larry. He gave us a tour of the school and answered pretty much every question we had about college. It was a great experience. I met my future track teammates minus our freshman class, and sat in two college classes. We went to a marketing class and an English class. The marketing class we sat in is actually a required course I'll have to take when I get there so it was quite exciting for me as well as educational. They were talking about information that I was already familiar with. The English class put into perspective the amount of reading that a college student assigned which is a lot! Students there gave us a lot tips on how to stay on top of the work assigned. The main tip was knowing how to manage my time. In college you have a lot of free time and the key is to know what to do with that free time.

Body inked up

Why do people get tattoos? I'm not saying that they're bad or anything because I have one myself, but what makes someone want to get tatted? Every tattoo I plan on getting has some meaning to it. It's not just some body art. I got a track foot that I drew up tatted up my chest because track is the love of my life. I can't explain it but track just takes me to this happy place. I wonder if anyone has ever thought of advertising using tattoos? That could be an untapped marketable field. I mean I wouldn't get a companies name tatted on me, but maybe someone who'd like to get paid would be interested in doing something like that. That would probably be considered as the most extreme form of advertising, but at least you'll know it's a life time of advertisement.

In the Books.!

Saturday was the Bridgeton Relays. They happened to be getting a new stadium built so it was held at Buena High School. We didn't go to the Bridgeton Relays last year so I really didn't know what to expect. It was my first all boys meet, so the competition was at its peak. When we first arrived there, I felt like it was going to be a great day. I can't really explain why but it just felt really good for some reason. I did three events that day. I did the high jump, shuttle hurdles, and the the sprint medley. My first event of the day was the high jump which was really odd because it's usually the last one. I jumped 5"10' and my partner Donald Houston jumped 6"0' for a combined height of 11"10'. We tied for first against this russian kid who I swear had iron legs. This wasn't even the highlight of my day. Next I ran the shuttle hurdles with my teammates Tyrone and Tre McCloud, and Indeo Ragsdale. When we got to the starting line, my heart was pumping faster than ever. It was like I was on the front line in the middle of the Civil War. I was scared to death. Indeo started the race. I couldn't really tell if we were in first or not until Tre came back as the second leg. We were in first as Tre came down the 100m stretch. He got over that last hurlde and yelled go! I shot out to the first hurdle like a million dollars was waiting for me at the finish. The whole time I was running I just kept repeating the word dive in my head as I went over every hurdle. I never ran that fast before. I was smooth like slicing butter. We came in first of course, but I had a feeling we ran extremely good for some reason that day. It just so happens that we shattered a 21 year meet record that was set in 1990, and now are names are in the books until someone can attempt to beat us. It was one of the happiest moments of my life.

Technical Difficulties(mentor meeting)

Coach McGuirl started telling me about these long and elaborate comments that he was writing on my blog. The whole time he's talking I'm thinking in my head,"This is great.! I have my sponsor and my mentor commenting frequently now," but I can tell by the way he was talking that there was going to be an unexpected ending to this story. Just so happened to be my luck that his computer's internet crashed while he was commenting on my blogs. This meeting was a lesson learned for Coach McGuirl that he should always type it up on word first so that if the internet crashes, you don't have to type it all over again.