story of my life...

If i had to pick the groups or organizations that most effected me while growing up i would have to say Football and boy scouts. i no in class, we talked about how you need nature and nurture to be a good basketball player, but for me i played football and i was not born with any sort of football talent. that all went to my brother. any way, because i was not as athletic as everyone else out there on the field i had to learn how to work hard. it forced me to learn discipline it definitely helped me develop my out look on life. because in football if I mess up someone else on the team gets hurt and to me that unacceptable.Every team does some thing to get pumped up like a cheer or yell. I was surprised though when my 8th grade coach taught us ours. Our slogan was R.I.P. no its not what your thinking it stood for Respect, Integrity, and Pride. he told us that those were the things we should play with and play for. so i figure that from football i have gained discipline, team work, camaraderie, and hard work. the other big influence in my life would be boy scouts. i have been a scout for 13 years now. and since i joined i have done my best to live my the scout Law which tells a scout to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. pretty much scouts teaches you how to be a good person. and being around good people and seeing good deeds and doing community service since i was little has made it a regular part of my life. for example when i know some one is in need i do what i can to help whether i personally know the person or not. for example a friend of mine, who was running a station at the Partnership walk, (a walk to raise money for under developed countries) asked if i could help him out. of course i said yes and so did many other people. but when they found out it was early the morning after the Home Coming dance most people changed there minds. but because i new that i had a friend in need i told him i would be there. scouts also taught me how to be independent. we go camping all the time and when your back in the woods you have to know what your doing most the time. when I went backpacking for 2 weeks in New Mexico I learn how to take care of myself and the others around me. its funny scouts and football are just some things that i do because i think there fun and i get to do some amazing things through them, but i cant even begin to tell you how different i would be if i didn't do them. i would not be nearly the same person. i guess a lot of my "nurture" came from them.

Main south football game

Our football team went to go watch the Main south vs. GBS game at main south this weekend. it was supposed to be a good game and we play both teams. we decided to cheer for GBS which we had beeten in over time 50-49. so the team and i assumed that we would not be very welcomed if the fans new who we were, so we didnt wear any stevenson cloths. any way we aere sitting in the parent section and we are cheering along with them for about a quarter when one of the players started talking to a man sitting next to him and it slipped out that we played for stevenson. well to our supprise they were not mad but happy that we would come out and support there team. the parents were thrilled and they loved how into the game we all were. i bring this up because before the game we were on the main south side and there fans made it clear that they disliked us. i find this puzzling because we came to watch the game as a neuteral party so why would a team that we didnt play hate us but a team we beat welcome us completely? i thought it could be the fact that we were ranked right below main south but i started to really think about the two schools football programs. GBS is usualy a god team and they are tought to play with pride and integrity. they dont have a flashy stateum, just a grass field with blechers. main south on the otherhand, is always a great team they go to state all the time they have won state like 6 times. they have a big stateum with artificial turff and a big score bored and it has hawks on every thing. pluse they are 22-0 they have not lost in 2 seasons. so i guesss what i am getting at is do you think that main south acts like that to us because they think there better because of the stuff they have and there history? or is it just the way these people are brought up in that town? why is GBS so welcoming? could main south feel threatned? well i feel it is just them showing off and being cocky but what do you think

swimming in the water

So i think that its funny that smith wants us to blog about things in our society that we don't realize are there and things we don't see cuz we are submerged in them. just throwing this out there but if we are not supposed to realize them and stuff how can we blog about them. well i will try my best i guess, here we go..... ok so some thing that might be considered water in our culture would be entertainment. like sports, clubs, games, computers, phones, ipods, any thing that is used or all about keeping us occupied while we are "bored". we are such a rich nation that most people don't even think twice about seeing a movie, watching sports on TV, or listening to music and sitting around. but there are people in under developed countries that cant even afford food and they work so hard and so long that they only have free time to go home and sleep. i am not saying that we don't work hard but we do have a lot more free time than most people and apposed to using money and resources on survival we can spend it on entertainment. i feel like we don't even think about all the things that we do or things that we have that are not essential to survival that other cultures don't have and cant get. we don't realize how lucky we are as a culture. if we had to worry about survival every day and wonder if we will live tomorrow that would change how we live and how we think completely.
One thing that a lot of people have a hard time doing is navigating through the virtually invisible "water" of there culture. i think that the only way to do this successfully is to step back and look at other cultures. it would help even more to talk with people from other places. because if you cant see what is different then how do you no what you have to work with you need to compare in order to fully understand your surroundings. like the example of you cant see the good with out the bad. so you need to be able to compare our culture to another one. i think that we adjust to our culture pressures all the time it might be a slow adjustment but we do. we used to be just like any under developed nation and had to worry about survival but slowly we shifter out of that and we would not have noticed that we did if we couldn't see under developed nations today.
there are a lot of values that Americans have, but there are a few that i would slightly alter to fit me better. one of the Values of America is to be successful. this usually means that your rich and have every thing you want. i just want to be well off i want to not have to worry but i don't want to be caught up in working all the time i want to be able to get out and enjoy life. another one is one thing that i value that has gone out the window from what i can see is community. i don't no any one that lives around me. when i went to visit a friend who lives in a small town in Iowa every one new every one and it was amazing. now I'm not saying that it has to be that extreme but we need to stop being such a closed off and privet society we need to venture out and meet people form more relationships with people. this will not only make us more friendly people and more excepting but it will help us to live healthier lives. so i hope that we can get a sense of community. but thats just what i see and how i feel about it

Infatilization

infatilization is when adults or teens digress and act like little children because of the way they are talked to or treated. you can see this happening every where especially at Stevenson. Stevenson tells us that they are prepairing us for the real world and getting us ready for college but they baby us and force some students to act like little children. one way they do this is by always having us watched or supervised at all times. for example they do not allow students to sit outside because they feel that students have to be monitored and watched every second. i feel like this makes the students act childish because they are babied. another thing that goes on that can make students act a little bit child like is teachers seem to always have to be nice they extend assignments and just tell there students that is ok and they take late work. this just reinforces the beliefe that we are little children adults should have to deal with the consicuenses that fallow there choices wether it is good or bad. on the other hand i feel that putting stickers or smilie faces on tests when students do well is wrong. students shuold be expected to study and do well it shouldnt be a giant party though. in the real world there wont be a pat on the back when you do things that are expected of you. I feel that these examples and more make the students act very childish and even shelter us to the point that some of us are not prepared for the "real world". what do you think do these things help or hurt us? and what exampls have you seen from ether school or in our larger society?