Final Blog

I have a few items and people that are important to me at this time in my life. Although my friends can be real jerks I need them. I am going to miss them and my family the most when I leave for college. The only other thing more important than them is my family.

Friends seem to come and go but four specific friends always seem to stay. Brody, Jon, Steve, and Danny have been my good friends ever since I have moved to Bayville. They have been there for me for a long time. Despite the conflicts we may have had it always results in a positive. I thought I had another friend that would be there for me always but that did not work out so well. She will not be missed so much. But enough about friends my family are true significant figures in my life. They have supported me over the years and molded me into the young man I am today.

Other than friends and family being the most important things in my life at the moment I want to talk about items and one other specific person. I feel the need to talk more about material objects because everyone will be talking about how important their friends and families are. Before I go on to my material items I would like to just say how important my girlfriend is to me. Her name is Alyssa and she does not attend central she goes to Lacey. She is just different and makes me happy and I can honestly say that she is very important to me.

Now I will talk about my materialistic items. The device that I am using right now is highly important to me. Yes I am talking about my laptop. It is not just any laptop it is my Macbook pro. I got it sophomore year and it still runs like thee day I bought it. I treat it as if it was my child. I am very cautious as to who uses it and freak out on my friends when they do not handle it properly. I think this is very important to me because I love technology. I love new innovative devices. It makes me feel intelligent just to use it. I feel like I am using a device of the future.

Other than my computer shoes are my most prized items I own. I treat them with so much care it is scary. I clean them, wipe them, spray them, protect them, and deodorize them. I own over 35 pairs but they are all equally important to me. It may sound strange but they are an extension of me. I feel that shoes can really tell a lot about how a person is. I will never wear beaten up tattered shoes. I like my feet looking there best. When a nice pair of shoes is on my feet it makes others think that I like to stay clean and like to look good. This is all true. Dirty beat up shoes express that someone does not care. Not just about there shoes but about various other things. I am a very paranoid person and care about almost everything I do. It has to be perfect. This is why I see my shoes as a reflection upon myself and the way people view me.

Courage

Courage is a truly overused word. It has way more meaning then the way some people may portray it. You have to really do something courageous to receive the title of having courage. I can’t even say that I am courageous. I may have been maybe once or twice in my lifetime but I am not overall a courageous person.

            Courage can be determined in a lot of ways the one way that I have used it is standing up for myself. You do on let anyone push you around and you stand up for yourself. That is showing courage. It shows courage because not everyone is brave enough to stand up to someone else, especially if they are bigger then you. I stand up to my friends who think they are tough and get one over on me. They are sadly mistaken I show my courage my getting in there face and proving them wrong. This is just a mild expression of courage.

            The true courageous men are the men who fight for our country. I am not just talking about the men who think by going to the marine core or army are going to straighten there lives out or all of the sudden become a badass. I am talking about the men who truly love fighting for this country. They fight to keep us alive, now that shows courage. I don’t mean to offend anyone who is just going to the marines because their family members did or because they want to straighten their lives out. But that is not true courage. Yes it does take courage to join but once you are in you have to pull through and truly show your courage. For the men that run back in the line of fire to save a fellow marine deserve the title of courageous. The men who risk their lives to save others are the ones who deserve and Medal of Honor for their courage.

            I did not mean to be offensive to anyone who may be courageous for other reasons. I think many individuals with illnesses are courageous as well. They are basically guinea pigs to society and scientists. All of their treatments are trials to find the true cure. It takes a lot of courage to allow a doctor to perform various procedures on you. I especially give props to cancer patients. They are truly guinea pigs. No one knows the cure to cancer and they continue to run tests on cancer patients in attempt to find the answer.

            Everyone has a little bit of courage in them and at times it will come out. It will come out when it is needed. You may be scared and not want to jump off that bridge to save your friend but courage will kick in and you will do it. When others are in danger courage will come to the rescue. That is why our troops in Iraq are so valued for there courageous events. They show courage to save the lives of others.

Ahh college

I truly underestimated how hard college is going to be until the other day.

It hit me like a brick wall. It was a Sunday morning and I had to drive up to Rutgers for a scheduled practice. When I arrived with another one of my teammates I did not think anything of practice. I thought it was just going to be a normal practice until I got into the room. The room was over a hundred degrees and I could already sense the intensity. As we began to jog I did not suspect anything that was until our jog only lasted five minutes. Then a white board was brought into the room with a list of exercises.  For the next half hour practice was hell. Everything on that board had to be done and not one exercise was simple. Some involved doing a bear crawl while pulling sand bags in between my legs and others involved reverse walks up a wall. As soon as I thought it was over we began doing sprints for another half hour. Then after I threw up a few times I came back into the room to find out it was time to drill. Lucky me I get paired up with coach. For the next forty-five minutes I had to deal with my coach throwing me around like a rag doll. I thought to myself if practice is this hard now imagine how hard it will be when season actually starts.

            After thinking about how hard practice was going to be made me realize how much even harder school will be. I did not pick an easy major. I am going to school to be a biology major. Now the even harder part is going to be balancing wrestling and biology. I know I have to be prepared when I enter college because I will not have very much free time. I will not have much of a life except for wrestling and school. I know it will be difficult and I have to pull through.

            As the school year is ending I become more and more nervous for college. It is not so much that I am nervous to live away from home but that I am going to have so much work to balance. I just have to manage for four years to become successful. It will most likely be the four hardest years of my life but I know I will receive a lot from the experience. A lot of knowledge and skills will be acquired. I will become a much better wrestler. Once you can survive wrestling everything else in life becomes easier. This is advice I received from previous graduates from Rutgers. They say the hard work, sweat, and tears will pay off in the end. If one individual can suffer so much then everything else seems like a piece of cake. This is why my fear is not so bad. I am scared to go to college but know that it is the best choice that I can be making.

Advice

            If I could give advice to my younger self I would have a few things to say. No drastic changes because I have achieved a lot in my high school career. One of the biggest things I would say to myself is to open up socially a little easier. I am very open now but my freshman and sophomore year I keep to myself more. I should have been my normal weird self all the time and not have worried what others would think. That is the way to find your real friends. I learned that a little late but it was not anything major. I still have all of the same friends. Another minor change would have been my work ethic. I have good work ethic now but it could have been better. I used to wait to the last minute a lot in my younger years. I did not do it as much as I grew older except for right now because I am growing tired of school and just want it to end. Senioritis has finally kicked in.

The biggest piece of advice I would have given myself is to not doubt myself. I still doubt myself now but not as bad as I used to. I always think of ideas and doubt whether they are good or not and then I later find out they are. I always doubt whether I am right or wrong. Because of my doubt it took me a long time to finally see the potential I had in wrestling. I wish I had realized this much earlier. I feel I could have placed more then once in the states if I realized this. I needed to be more aggressive. Being aggressive would have made me do much better. I would have been intimidating to my opponents I would have made them quit. If I were aggressive they would not have wanted to wrestle me. Being aggressive is how you break your opponent. It would have made wrestling a lot easier on me.

Next I would tell myself to get more involved. I am adequately involved as it is now but I should have been more involved. I wish I had stayed with the clubs that I started. It doesn’t matter how stupid the club is. In the long run being a member of so many different clubs and after school activities looks good. I was not thinking about that. I cared about what others would think of me. I now realized that that is not important. I should have stayed in all of the clubs I started they would have been great achievements to add to my resume.

Lastly I would have told myself to get more sleep. I never got enough sleep and I was always tired. To this day I still do not get enough sleep. I need to take my own advice and start getting to bed earlier. Sleep is a necessity in doing good in school and sports.

Forgiveness

This is somewhat of a tough topic for me. I say this because at times I can be very spiteful. Sometimes I do not want to forgive others. Sometimes those others don’t deserve my forgiveness. An apology does not always clear up the damage that has been done. Time does not always clear up the damage that has been done either. Accepting an apology is not always easy to accept. A lot of thought goes into an apology. Even if an apology is given 8 months later it should still be respected not necessarily forgiven.

            Forgiveness is not something that should just be handed out. To forgive you need to have some type of reassurance. The person who has done wrong needs to confront you about there wrongdoing and. If you feel that they are worthy of forgiveness they shall receive it. I am usually not easy to forgive. Being a forgiving person does not make you a push over. If someone is forgiving all of the time then they become a push over. It lets other know that they can push you around without any consequence.

            I know how this feels because I used to let it happen to me when I was younger I was to kind and forgiving. Now I don’t take any crap from anyone. No one should be too forgiving and no one should be non-forgiving. Not having any forgiveness is unhealthy. It just means you are an angry spiteful person. No one likes an angry person. Forgiveness is a key factor in society. You can not have to much of it and to little of it. I am still trying to find that healthy median that should be achieved.

            There are times in my life where I have forgiven people. I forgive someone at least one time a week. It is only human nature to mess up. There are other times in my life where I still have not forgiven people. I feel that at the moment they do not deserve my forgiveness. I actually have forgiven everyone in my life except for maybe one or two people who shall remain nameless. Sometimes an apology does not make up for the action that was done.

            No matter what someone may call me or do to me I usually forgive them. It all depends on the person who said it and if they truly meant it. I do not like it when someone says something about my family and they do not know them. Do not attack my family or heritage that will set me off. There will be no time for forgiveness. You will most likely be on the ground before you can say you are sorry. Now I have had one of my friends say something about my heritage before and he was not joking around like usual. He seemed pretty serious. I was pissed off and in the end he apologized. He did not mean to call me what he did he was angry and I forgave him for it. Someone else would not get a second chance.

Gag Gifts and Awards

For this weeks blog I am going to just write about how my day went. Well first I woke up and then I went back to sleep. But the out of nowhere I woke up again it was a crazy experience. It has never happened to me before and as you can tell I am using a great deal of sarcasm. But in all seriousness I had a very eventful day. First I had to prepare a lot of gag gifts for my wrestling banquet. At one point during the day I had to run to dollar tree buy a toy horse and then steal one of the shopping carts from dollar tree. It was the hardest gag gift to get. It was raining out and I had to try to sneak it into the bag of my truck. It was all worth it because the look on everyone’s face was priceless when we presented the gift to the wrestler. This was the best year in a long time for gag gifts. I had put a lot of thought into these gifts. Some of them were inside jokes that were completely inappropriate and others were ones that everyone could enjoy. There turned out being 13 total gag gifts. Everyone enjoyed them all as well as the wrestlers.

            Despite the merriment of the gag gifts the banquet itself was very nice. It was the best wrestling banquet I have had in my high school career. It was run comfortably. It was run as if we were all family just enjoying a dinner. Everyone was having a great time and I enjoyed especially since it was the last time my teammates and I would be together. It was a sad moment in my wrestling career but at the same time a very joyous moment.

            It almost brought a tear to my eye when my coach presented me the award for the most outstanding wrestler. I was truly honored. It was a customized award with a list of all my crowning achievements on it. It truly was something to be proud of. It felt great to have so many people support me and look up to me. I didn’t really know what to say when I received the award I felt speechless. I wanted to make a speech but at that moment I could not. I just thanked my coaches and gave them all hugs.

            Later on after the awe of the award had faded I made a speech. I talked about how I could not have done this without the help from all of my amazing coaches. It all started with my grade school recreational wrestling coach. He was there to see me accept the award so he was very happy to hear me speak about him. I also mention how the support of all the parents helped me make it so far. I also included one of Central wrestling’s alumni. His name was Mike Denver he was the one who taught me the moves I needed to make it to states. After thanking everyone and concluding my speech I handed my coaches a special gift. It was an engraved mug in which they highly appreciated. They had never received such an amazing gift. They’re happiness made me happy and ended my already good day on an even better note.

8 Weeks!

Damn… this makes me pretty sad. I didn’t realize how little time there is until my high school career is over. I can say one thing though. I do not regret anything I did in school. I had a great time so far and have accomplished a lot. I have been successful academically and even more successful in athletics. Although I had a pretty amazing and successful high school career there are a few things I wish I had done.

            First off I always worked hard in school but I wish I worked harder. I men sure I got good grades mostly A’s and a few B’s here and there but I wish I did better. I wish I put more time and effort into some of the projects, essays, and tests. I have a good class rank but I wish it were higher. I am seventeen in the class right now I would have liked to be at least in the top ten. My grades and rank were ok but I was not 100 percent happy with them. It would have been a great accomplishment for me if I could have received all A’s and no B’s. Not even an A-. Only an A or A+ would be acceptable.

            I wish I had managed my time better I had some poor time management. I hope to learn to be better at time management in College. The better I manage my time the better my grades will be and the better I will do in Athletics. As a Student going to Rutgers University for wrestling I have a lot on my plate. It is a top 20 in the nation wrestling school. On top of the wrestling I am going to be biology major. I am going to have nearly no time for myself. This is why I will need great time management. To prevent myself from going mad I need to find some free time for myself. I will have to get up early and take care of as much as I can so I do not have to be up so late doing all of my work like I am right now. I will not procrastinate on my work anymore. No matter how much I do not want to do the work I am going to force myself to do it. College is my future and I cannot mess that up. At Rutgers I want to keep up my highest GPA record for the wrestling team. I strive off of my academics. I may have had a few distractions to bring my grades down a little in high school but there will be none in college. I am going to be a strict student who does his work and wrestles. There is only a little time for fun and games. Everything is going to be mostly business. I want to make college the most informative four or five years of my life. I want to be extremely knowledgeable about my profession of choice.